May Swenson, Utah-born poet of Swedish Mormon immigrant parents, whom critic John Hollander calls “one of our few unquestionably major poets,” was within a few days of her thirty-sixth birthday when she met Pearl Schwartz. A woman of Mediterranean descent just past twenty-six, Schwartz was an attendant at a contagious disease hospital. Swenson would soon … Continue reading A FIGURE IN THE TAPESTRY: THE POET’S FEELING RUNS AHEAD OF HER IMAGINATION (GREENWICH VILLAGE 1949–50)