The Woods at Night (1962). Content and Description

Swenson started work on this poem on April 28, 1962, and it was originally published alone in the Nation on January 26, 1963. It appeared in her collection To Mix with Time that same year. In 1966 “The Woods at Night” was collected in Poems to Solve as one of four bird poems. Swenson’s love of birds would inspire many other birding poems throughout her career.

When read aloud, “The Woods at Night” sounds like a bird’s song. It is extremely focused in that it leaves everything out of the woods except the birds. Swenson uses alliteration and rhyme patterns in this piece to keep the poem moving along at a brisk tempo, even as most of the birds are sleeping. The reader sees the woods sharply through the nocturnal eyes of the “binocular owl” and is nearly lulled into sleepy observation by the poem’s rhymes.

In the second stanza Swenson’s owl sees and lists six sleeping birds in their natural habitats, naming the “towhee under leaves,” the “titmouse deep / in a twighouse,” the “sapsucker gripped / to a knothole lip,” the “redwing in the reeds,” the “swallow in the willow,” and the “flicker in the oak.” This list concludes with a seventh bird, the one the owl “cannot see.” The distinction “poor whippoorwill” foreshadows what readers assume will be its fate.

By the end of “The Woods at Night,” the reader is reminded of the owl’s predatory nature. Our suspicions are nearly confirmed when we discover that the only other bird awake in the forest is the “poor whippoorwill,” whose “stricken eye” is “flayed by the moon” as “her brindled breast / repeats, repeats, repeats, its plea / for cruelty.”

As in many of Swenson’s poems, the conclusion is open-ended. We do not discover whether the whippoorwill’s taunt is answered. Although this poem stops short of directly acknowledging the violence in nature, Swenson hints at it, leaving readers with a more authentic sense of “The Woods at Night.”

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Read Robert Frost’s “The Oven Bird” in conjunction with Swenson’s “The Woods at Night.” Both poems attempt to tell the truth about nature through the eyes of a particular bird. Consider the different perspectives that are presented in each of the poems and articulate how they affect the overall tone and message in each poem respectively.

2. Read Marianne Moore’s poem “Bird-Witted” along with “The Woods at Night.” Analyze their playful tones and consider how gender is presented in each poem.

Works Cited and Additional Resources:
Bloom, Herald. The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages. New York: Riverhead, 1995.
Doty, Mark. “Queer Sweet Thrills: Reading May Swenson.” Yale Review 88, no. 1 (2000): 86-110.

Knudson, R. R., and Suzzanne Bigelow. May Swenson: A Poet’s Life in Photos. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996.
“May Swenson.” Poets.org. Available online. URL: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/168. Accessed May 21, 2007.

McFall, Gardner. “Introduction.” In Made with Words. By May Swenson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Ostriker, Alicia. Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.

Russell, Sue. “A Mysterious and Lavish Power: How Things Continue to Take Place in the Work of May Swenson.” Kenyon Review 16, no. 3 (1994): 128-139.
Stearman, Roberta. “The Journey Would Not Be Entirely Foolish: May Swenson’s Utah Origins.” Utah English Journal 25 (1997): 14-19.