This remarkable collection by the renowned and prolific poet Wally Swist is the clearest manifestation yet of the spiritual posture that has influenced his work for decades. In the first parts of the book, Swist reveals his personal experiences of "Oneness," the "ahness of the present moment," in snapshots of daily living: the peal of wind chimes hung in a shower, the bark of a neighbor's Rottweiler, the creak of a house that is an archive of memory-filled photographs and collectibles, the enjoyment of a tomato/brie sandwich. At the center of the collection, Swist unveils his awareness of energy surges that he describes as "a benediction, an act of grace, an anointing-by an angel." Swist then concludes the book with a series of haiku that he assisted in translating from Japanese; these haiku, written by poets from the haiku group Yukige (Melting Snow) and led by Kazuo Ueda, are about the Aneyakouji neighborhood in Kyoto and were intended to highlight the persistence of the past in the face of modernization. Overall, Swist seeks to awaken in the reader a belief that we are all part of the "Oneness.
In Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love, poet Wally Swist blends themes of love and epiphany to lead readers into a more conscious interaction with the world around them. These ethereal poems call upon a spirituality unfettered to any specific religion, yet universal and potent in its scope, offering a window through which life can be not only viewed but also truly experienced. This luminescent collection illustrates the joys to be found in the everyday world and the power of existence. Unveiled here are the twin edges of love and madness; the quiet mysteries and revelations of a New England night or the glittering spark of snowdrops; the sharp scents of sugar maple and cinnamon; and the rustle of a junco’s wings. From the restoration and peace of silence or the rush of a brook, to spiraling hawks and Botticelli’s “The Annunciation,” Swist’s poems linger somewhere between the earthbound and the sublime.
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in a letter-later collected in the posthumous book Letters to a Young Poet-that a writer always has a storehouse of inspiration to draw upon from childhood memories. Wally Swist's seventeenth full-length collection of poetry, Taking Residence, begins with poems regarding childhood memories and, in quite a symphonic manner, concludes with them. A collection containing poems honoring the natural world, a suite written as a tribute to a friend who passed, twenty-six poems that are translations from the Spanish of Federico Garcia Lorca and St. John of the Cross and from the Italian of Giuseppe Ungaretti; the poet drawing from mindfulness practice and the practice of presence, the political cacophony of the last presidential administration, and spiritual and substantive nourishment Gastronomique-these are poems that address what it is to take residence in the heart, which Carl Jung spoke to when he offered that after a long life of studying the psyche and the soul, he just might have started to live his life at the level of the heart chakra. Taking Residence is a multifaceted and layered book of poetry built upon the foundational notion that "learning what it is that is taking residence in the heart" is a worthwhile and lifelong pursuit.
Winding Paths Worn Through Grass offers a meditative experience but also invites the reader to step off the page and walk a summer meadow or stand beside a running mountain brook in winter. This is graceful, elegant poetry, controlled, engaging, marked by lyric simplicity, filled with wisdom and gentleness of vision. Swist pays homage to his roots in Eastern spirituality by his tribute to the Katha Upanishad in the book's initial poem, and he includes a sequence of free-verse tanka written after attending a performance of the Japanese percussion ensemble Kodo. Often honoring European poets such as Attila Jozsef or Giuseppe Ungaretti, or American poets such as Bert Meyers and Robert Francis, these lyric poems focus on the evocation of precise images rooted in the natural world, through which the reader, stopping to listen here, now, may be transported by something as simple and concrete as the wind snapping a branch of white pine into a realm of spiritual transcendence, "going further, further.
In this remarkable collection, Wally Swist deftly fuses the sensual-in food, in nature, in art-with the intellectual and spiritual. Swist's poetry pulls us magnetically from one image to the next, from the "lush purple flowers of hepatica" to the horrors of the battlefield, from the setting of a breakfast table and a cat's meow to the pleasures of love-making, from apples and cheese on a plate to religious faith. Each transition, each merging of physical sensation with spiritual insight, is at once delicate and powerful, startling and perfect. With its technical virtuosity, intelligence, and depth, Swist's poetry lingers in the ear, the mind, and the heart long after the page is closed.
Poetry. "Wally Swist's poems are lean and clean to the bone. Meditations on nature, love, sanity and evil are limned with grace and clarity. Finally, though, this book is a celebration, the way one man coming face to face with a fox is a kind of celebration"-James Tate. Wally Swist was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1953. His essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in The American Book Review, The Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, Poetry East, The Small Press Review, and Yankee. He has published several chapbooks of his work and is the recipient of a grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. "To read a Wally Swist poem is to see a piece of the world in a special way. A whole book of such poems is a blessing"-Gary Metras.
Acclaimed poet Wally Swist remarks on events of everyday living in this brilliant collection. "The Female Cardinal," "Ray's Sandwich Shop," "Ode to My New Shoes," and, of course, "Candling the Eggs" show us how to notice the value in commonplace events. Yet, there is more, as we see in "What is Essential" and "Abhorrence;" living calls for action. Of over thirty books and chapbooks, this is perhaps his finest.
The essays, reviews, and prose collected in "Singing for Nothing" offer Swist's poetic ruminations, socio-political thought, and philosophy over 40 years. Pushing the boundaries of nonfiction and memoir, this text considers haiku and Zen; pop culture, measurement, American retirement and psycho-spirituality alongside a chakra meditation and poetry
The poems in Velocity continue to develop themes Wally Swist explored in a recent Timberline Press limited edition, Blessing and Homage. These poems offer a distinct sense of gratitude and tribute: the spiritual connectedness experienced in constructing stone sculptures or in stacking a cord of wood; and the simplicity found in the shine of a Shaker wide-plank oak floor or the experience of loss in a favorite dog's death. There are several poems addressed to other poets, such as New England poet Leo Connellan and Canadian lyric poet anne mckay. Other poems pay homage to Denise Levertov, Pablo Neruda, Jack Spicer, and Walt Whitman. Other tributes include a haiku sequence dedicated to the late internationally-respected editor Robert Spiess and to the electroacoustic contemporary composer, Elainie Lillios, who has set a number of the author's poems to music. Often presented through the matrix of natural images and the ethos of an active spirituality, the poetry in this collection addresses the velocity of life experience and the practice of living in the present moment, either in witnessing one's own true nature pool within oneself, as in the rush of a brook; or what is a kind of iconic transcendence found in Butoh, an innovative form of Japanese dance, where we all may "begin again.
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