Question (1954). Content and Description

“Question” originally appeared in Swenson’s first collection of poetry, Another Animal, published in 1954 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. As the title of the book implies, Swenson was interested in the interaction and similarities between animal and human worlds. In the first stanza Swenson addresses her own body directly, calling it “my house / my horse my hound,” and asks the ultimate question about death: “what will I do / when you are fallen”?

The metaphor of the body as a house for the soul would have been familiar religious imagery to Swenson, because it would not have been uncommon for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to understand the self as both separate from and part of the physical human body. However, Swenson’s next line, “my horse my hound,” complicates the metaphor.

The poem begins as a loving and laudatory song but moves quickly into a nervous and fearful plea. The next stanza is concerned primarily with the action of a living body, and the language in the second stanza is parallel to the first. “Where will I sleep” is a direct question for “Body my house,” and “How will I ride / What will I hunt” are queries for “my horse my hound.”

In this poem Swenson uses all the question words in an interesting pattern. When separated from the rest of the poem, the plea becomes more pronounced and intense: what where how what where how how how. The only question in this poem that is not a question is when. Swenson’s use of the word makes it clear that the speaker in the poem knows that death is inevitable.

The timing of the event is not the most important detail; rather, “how will it be” and “how will I hide” are of the utmost concern. If the central question of this poem is seeking to identify the self— what is it? where is it?—then Swenson asks the reader to consider what it means when “Body my good / bright dog is dead”?

The fourth stanza imaginatively suggests that shedding our bodies might be a liberating experience: “How will it be / to lie in the sky / without roof or door / and wind for eye,” but the final two lines worry: “With cloud for a shift / how will I hide?” The speaker also fears that a loss of the body might simply leave her self naked and exposed. The only punctuation found in the poem is a question mark after the final line.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. After reading Swenson’s “Question,” read Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric” and consider the delight and doubt about the human body that are contained in both poems. Write an essay informed by these two poems that considers how gender identity might influence delight or doubt in adolescent body images.

2. In small groups, discuss life’s biggest questions; identify what they are, where they will affect you, and how you intend to answer them.