By Morning (1952). Content and Description

This poem was the first of 59 poems Swenson would publish with Howard Moss and the New Yorker over 38 years. “By Morning” is one of Swenson’s early shape poems, an experimentation in which she uses white space or capitalization to give a poem a unique shape or form. She explains in a note from Iconographs, a collection of her shape poems, that her intention was to “cause an instant object-to-eye-encounter with each poem before it is read word- for-word. To have simultaneity as well as sequence.

To make an existence in space, as well as time, for the poem.” “By Morning” is also one of Swenson’s riddle poems, which flirt with meaning rather than facing it directly. These riddle poems are evocative and playful; they invite the reader to guess at the subject matter with the hints Swenson provides. The first two stanzas of “By Morning” abandon punctuation entirely and utilize quirky spacing to hint at a specific, fluttery kind of weather:

Some for everyone plenty and more coming
Fresh dainty airily arriving everywhere at once.

Although the spaces and repetition clearly suggest a breathy, tumbling type of precipitation, Moss believed that readers might not fully understand the concept of a riddling poem, and so he asked whether Swenson would be willing to publish it with a different title. She agreed because she was delighted at the prospect of seeing “Snow by Morning” in the New Yorker’s prominent literary pages.

Swenson uses an obvious metaphor for snow, the imagery of a blanket, but then makes it fresh again by allowing the blanket magically to change the city into a more rural and pastoral landscape, where

Streets will be fields cars be fumbling sheep
A deep bright harvest will be seeded in a night.

“By Morning” is a celebratory poem that acknowledges the playful power of nature to soften the hard edges of both the city and its inhabitants. By morning, Swenson concludes, “we’ll be children / feeding on manna / a new loaf on every doorsill.”

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Spend some time outdoors observing nature. Identify a common natural phenomenon or a familiar animal as the subject and attempt your own shape or riddle poem. Pay particular attention to your description and try to make the common and familiar subject seem new by looking at it with a fresh perspective.

2. Read the full text of Swenson’s poem “By Morning,” and compare or contrast it to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Snow Storm” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “It Sifts from Leaden Sieves” circa 1862. Identify the central images in each poem and be prepared to discuss the differences in stance, style, and tone that each author employs.