Poet Charles A. Swanson may have retired from teaching English, but he will always be a writer. An MFA graduate from Queens University, he currently publishes as a designated “Frequent Contributor” for the quarterly e-zine Songs of Eretz Poetry Review.
As a pastor for Melville Avenue Baptist in Danville, Swanson writes weekly sermons and reflections. His spirituality, including deep concern for nature and rural life, runs through his poems. “My poetry comes from a pastor’s view of the world,” Swanson says, “and, I hope, from a pastor’s heart.”
Swanson’s lovely chapbook, Farm Life and Legend, is available from Finishing Line Press. (This book, with cover art by Drew A. Swanson, is even prettier in person.) The book brings together narratives and the witness of nature, as in “Turtles Rising.”
After the Garden: Selected Responses to the Psalms is Swanson’s full-length poetry collection from Motes Books. Seeing the words, “Responses to the Psalms,” might lead you to expect didactic, oatmeal-plain paraphrases.
But Swanson’s work is full of surprises, including wry humor and the realities of rural life. Swanson begins each poem with verses chosen for beauty of language, spiritual challenge, and unexpected connections.
Consider “The Profane and the Holy,” inspired by the verse, “He who has clean hands and a pure heart . . .” And subtitled “Hog killing on the day before Thanksgiving.” This concise poem mingles the spiritual resonance of the verse with powerful, bloody imagery.
Writing Exercises: Image as Gateway
For this spotlight, Swanson provided two exercises involving imagery. As he says, “Imagery can evoke emotions, and be the horse on which intriguing narrative rides.”
Both exercises have been classroom-tested in secondary school English for years. Swanson had great success with first-years, sophomores, juniors, and seniors . . . And I bet they’d translate well in other levels, too.
The “Scentsational” Experience
- Take 12 lidded Styrofoam cups. Place a strong-smelling everyday substance in each. Substance can be solid or liquid. (Make sure to avoid known or common allergens, such as peanut butter!)
- Ask the students, by smell only, to make their best guess about each cup’s contents.
- After all the sniffing is over, guessing, and debating is over, the instructor identifies each cup.
- Then the students are asked to choose one scent. (They can choose any of the 12, another strong scent tied to memory, or even their misidentification of a cup’s contents.)
- Now write about how the smell figures in memory.
Swanson warns the excitement of the exercise may not lead to the most literary poetry, but you’re going to see an entire classroom come to life.
More “Hands-On” Learning
- Give each student one piece of white bread from an ordinary loaf of store-bought bread.
- Ask them to remove the crust. (Some ask if they can eat the crust; Swanson says he always allowed it, but in days of Covid use your best judgment.)
- Squeeze a generous amount of white school glue on each student’s crustless slice of bread.
- Work the bread and glue into a putty.
- Show the students how to shape the “clay” into rose petals
- Press the rose petals gently onto the end of a toothpick and allow to set. After it hardens, students can paint the rose if they choose.
- After experiencing the changing texture of that sticky paste, ask them to write about any experience they remember involving a strong sense of touch.
For an example of how this exercise can bring out memories turned to poetry, Swanson offers a poem from the Spring 2021 issue of Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. His poem, “What would I put my hand in?” is an obvious response, but I’d bet his poem “Afghan,” from the same issue, would spark a lot of tactile images too.
Make one, two, three, ninety squares–
from “Afghan” by Charles A. Swanson, published in Songs of Eretz
somewhere in there the shape
becomes rote, as do the twists
of wrist, the slide of yarn
over the finger holding taut
the thread and emerging weave.
