Taking Residence
Published on 18. May 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-1-951651-84-8 (ISBN)
Description
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in a letter-later collected in the posthumous book Letters to a Young Poet-that a writer always has a storehouse of inspiration to draw upon from childhood memories. Wally Swist's seventeenth full-length collection of poetry, Taking Residence, begins with poems regarding childhood memories and, in quite a symphonic manner, concludes with them. A collection containing poems honoring the natural world, a suite written as a tribute to a friend who passed, twenty-six poems that are translations from the Spanish of Federico Garcia Lorca and St. John of the Cross and from the Italian of Giuseppe Ungaretti; the poet drawing from mindfulness practice and the practice of presence, the political cacophony of the last presidential administration, and spiritual and substantive nourishment Gastronomique-these are poems that address what it is to take residence in the heart, which Carl Jung spoke to when he offered that after a long life of studying the psyche and the soul, he just might have started to live his life at the level of the heart chakra. Taking Residence is a multifaceted and layered book of poetry built upon the foundational notion that "learning what it is that is taking residence in the heart" is a worthwhile and lifelong pursuit.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 9 mm
Weight
242 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-951651-84-8 (9781951651848)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Wally Swist's Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest. He was the 2018 winner of the Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize, by unanimous judging, for his collection A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poetry Regarding Birds and Nature (2019). Recent books include Awakening and Visitation (2020), Evanescence: Selected Poems (2020), and Taking Residence (2021), all with Shanti Arts. His books of nonfiction include Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (Brooklyn, NY: The Operating System, 2018), On Beauty: Essays, Reviews, Fiction, and Plays (New York & Lisbon: Adelaide Books, 2018), and A Writer's Statements on Beauty: New and Selected Essays and Reviews (Brunswick, ME: Shanti Arts, 2022). His translation of L'Allegria by Giuseppe Ungaretti was published by Shanti Arts in 2023. Swist is a recipient of Artist's Fellowships in poetry from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (1977 and 2003). His essays, poetry, and translations have appeared in Asymptote (Taiwan), Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation, Healing Muse, Hunger Mountain, La Piccioletta Barca (U.K.), The Montreal Review, Other Journal, Poetry London, Today's American Catholic, Transference: A Literary Journal Featuring the Art & Process of Translation, (Western Michigan Department of Languages), Vox Populi, and Your Impossible Voice. His book, Aperture, poems regarding caregiving his spouse through Alzheimer's, was published in 2025 by Kelsay Books.