Deciding (1954). Content and Description

There is an underlying sexuality in the poem “Deciding,” which is a casual discussion and acceptance of both Swenson’s gender identity and society’s opinion of her sexual orientation. The poet Mark Doty observes that one of Swenson’s techniques is her playfulness, where she “is not only hiding in plain sight, but flaunting, as they used to say, a celebration of sexual pleasure” (95). Swenson originally published the poem “Deciding” under the heading “Part 2: Targets in the Brain” in her collection A Cage of Spines, a clear indication that this topic was on her mind.

She later collected “Deciding” as a “Riddling Poem” in the 1963 collection To Mix with Time, a volume that preceded Swenson’s Poems to Solve by three years. Perhaps Swenson was not quite ready for “Deciding” to be solved; perhaps she preferred that her sexual orientation remain a riddle. When Nature: Poems Old and New was published posthumously in 2000, “Deciding” was finally collected under the grouping “Selves.”

This celebratory “coming-out” poem playfully asks readers to consider lesbian sexuality as a delightful romp, while we reflect on the emerging lesbian as potato:

Deciding to go on digging doing it what they said outside wasn’t any use inside hiding it made it get ambitious like a potato in a dark bin it grew white grabbers for light out of its navel-eyes not priding itself much just deciding. (Swenson, A Cage ofSpines 56)

However, Swenson does not necessarily want her readers to forget that “hiding it made it get ambitious,” a line that could be read as either cautionary or celebratory. “Deciding” is a decidedly open-ended poem. The lack of punctuation throughout the poem and the potential for readers to base meaning on their own insertions of a pause where commas and periods might be allude to this open-endedness.

A reader might scan the first line and read it in this way: Deciding to go on, digging, doing it,” which suggests a kind of plodding persistence. Or, another reader might scan the first line like this: “Deciding to go on! Digging, doing it.” which is a reading that sounds much more hopeful. Finally, Swenson may have been playing around with the potato metaphor and the “Beat generation’s” definition of digging it with the following reading of the first line: “Deciding! To go on digging doing it.” To dig it meant to “like, enjoy, or take pleasure in” something, in this case “doing it,” which is an obvious, if a bit juvenile, reference to sex.

By leaving out the punctuation, Swenson does not make any decisions for her readers; in fact, she does not ever conclusively “decide” that coming out is the best option, even for herself. Swenson is deciding that despite the “outside thumps” and societal pressure to conform to stereotypical gender roles that she has seriously considered, she is “going to go on digging doing it,” but she allows her readers to make their own decisions.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Review the entire text of Swenson’s poem “Deciding.” As a writing exercise, add your own punctuation to the poem and then read it aloud. Compare your version to two other students’ and analyze the differences in meaning.

2. Consider the effect of the “outside thumps” that the speaker of the poem describes in the middle stanza. What roles do discouragement and imagination play in your life? Write your own poem or creative nonfiction essay exploring these topics.