May Swenson's poems [in New and Selected Things Taking Place] aspire to the condition of jewels. At their crystalline best they are hard and bright, glinting of green, stargold and topaz.

Not to be confused with diamonds in the rough, Swenson's poems are polished to within an inch of their lives, and they live, from image to image, in tiny darts of frosty fire….

Swenson's subjects range from zoo animals to moon landings, from butterflies "in sequin coat / peacock bright" to Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, "Cerulean is solid. Clouds are tiles, or floats of ice / a cobalt spa melts."…

One comes to feel that nothing is lost that is visible, that there is nothing the poet's eye cannot see and describe. But May Swenson is a poet of light, not shadow. In this generous, retrospective sampling of her work, her eye is caught by surfaces, contours, textures. Again and...