September 19, 2007

David Swanger
Award Winning Poet, Author,
Professor Emiritus University California Santa Cruz

For a “miserable, sexually frustrated, insomniac,” a little on the shy side, writing seemed like the obvious place to go for refuge. Years later writing has become, as William Wordsworth once said, “Where poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility,” for critically acclaimed author David Swanger, who quoted the famous poet during his appearance as guest speaker for the September 19, 2007 Pizza & Prose Literature series in Capitola.  Starting out as a short story writer while living in England , David’s work has evolved from bleak short stories to books of poetry and prose on a wealth of subjects from parenthood to nature, to September 11, 2001 . He also wrote the 1985 textbook The Evolution of Education, companion book to the class of the same name that he taught for many of the 34 years as professor of Education and creative writing at the University of California at Santa Cruz . Now, a professor emeritus at UCSC, he has been the recipient of an NEA fellowship in poetry, and a fellowship from the California Arts Council.

 Seeing his first book in print, published by Ithaca Press, was its own reward. Over forty years and many published books later, David, who has been the recipient of many honors and awards, including the prestigious John Ciardi Prize for Poetry for his latest book, Wayne’s College of Beauty, published in 2005. Twice this year author, humorist, and host of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor has chosen to read David’s poems during his radio broadcast on July 4th  and September 23.

 Setting out to write a satirical, sarcastic poem about the beauty college located in downtown Santa Cruz , David instead found himself “transformed.” He found he could only write “a loving poem,” of this place where one could pass by and see “the elderly and poor going in for haircuts,” while the woman who cut hair “stood outside smoking.” “I really like what it did to me,” he said. The poem brings together the women who “have dropped out of the other schools to enroll here where no one fails,” and “the timorous or imperious elderly,” who “have come at last to the right place.” By the end of the poem the reader is transformed by looking into that mirror where those who have come in from a cold world “leave beautiful…because they are briefly unlonely.”

 That poem like the others in this chapman book, sweeps the reader away and then, like a wave, sweeps back out to sea, as the reader hangs on to the last and lasting words.

  David explained how he “can’t write in sonnet,” although he admires people who can.” “The poem controls me,” he said as he told the group gathered how he has tried to write in rhyme form. “When I started out I looked for closure.” He eventually found that he didn’t want the poems to end and by keeping them open, the ideas continue to “swirl around…My main criticism of my colleagues’ work is to take out the last stanza.” According to one of those colleagues who was in the audience this is called  “Swangerizing.” 

 “Sometimes you don’t realize how powerful a poem will be. What it will mean,” he said as he segued into “My Daughter’s Morning,” the poem Keillor was scheduled to read the Sunday after this event. This poem was also read by Dr. Elliot Aronson, a renowned social psychologist, teacher, and author, at his own daughter’s wedding. Aronson, a fellow colleague and Professor Emeritus at UCSC who attended this reading, said it brought tears to his son-in-law’s eyes. Speaking to the wonder of being a new parent, David wrote, “I am made to marvel at the durability of newness and the beauty of my new one.”

 We got to meet the father David became as he read “Style,” written for his daughter Elissa, the artist whose friend created the cover for this book. She was once told by a teacher “never paint in black.” David’s response to this was, “There are too many rules, it takes good luck to live long enough to break them.” He goes on to tell her “Paint in black, bathe in black, wear black at your wedding, something so moral it resonates…”

 Of his only son, Max, he explained how their relationship, “Is complicated. He is a Buddhist. Things are tender between us and I invariably make things worse.” As he shared “I Can’t Help Myself at the Buddhist Retreat,” we saw what he meant. Through laughter and compassion the audience listened as he read this poem which tells of his accidentally setting off his car alarm at Tassajara the day his son was to be ordained as a monk.

 Hesitating before reading the last, a beautiful, touching elegy written for his father, he told his listeners of the initial struggle to write what turned out, to him,  to be a surprisingly spiritual poem or as he said “I found a bit of spirituality, like a dust bunny,” adding “what a jerk” in response to his own comment. From his first shy attempt to write about sex by writing about lemmings instead of people, to the poems about his own family, natural disasters and war, it is clear that David is a spiritual person of the best kind. He speaks to our inner nature and the struggle in all of us to grasp what it means to be human and in relationship to other humans. The most moving testament to that is the poem “Languages I Don’t Speak” written for his wife Lynn where he talks about his love for her meaning more to him than his own life.

 For anyone who has ever taken a class from David, he is clearly not “a jerk.” He is an impassioned teacher who can hold a class of over 500 students on the edge of their seats and in the palm of his hand. He is a poet who can be at once witty and tender. His words make the reader, or listener, think about what it means to exist within the seemingly random and fleeting cycles of nature.