Taking Residence - Swist, Wally

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Résumé :
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.

Biographie:
the book was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2012, and was nominated for a National Book Award. Swist is the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize for A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems and Haiku Regarding Birds & Nature. The book was published in late 2019 by master printer and book designer Gabriel Rummonds, of Bainbridge Island, Washington. He has also published five previous books of poetry with Shanti Arts, of Brusnwick, Maine, including Candling the Eggs (2016), The Map of Eternity (2018), The Bees of the Invisible (2019), Evanescence: Selected Poems (2020), and Awakening & Visitation (2020) . 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, Maine: Shanti Arts, 2021). Some of Swist's work has been set to music. This includes his poem The Rush of the Brook Stills the Mind, which inspired a composition by the electroacoustic composer Dr. Elainie Lillios. The composition was performed by percussionist Scott Deal in Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 20, 2013. It is only one of several venues across the country where the composition has been performed. Dr. Elainie Lillios is Professor of Composition at Bowling Green State University. His poem After Long Drought was also composed to an electroacoustical score written by Professor Lillios, and the composition was also premiered at Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music, in June 2016 by percussionist Scott Deal. A recipient of Artist's Fellowships in poetry from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (1977 and 2003), Swist was also awarded a one-year writing residency (1998) and two back-to-back one-year writing residencies (2003-2005) at Fort Juniper, the Robert Francis Homestead, in Cushman, Massachusetts, the home of his former mentor. Swist's poetry and prose have appeared in such national periodicals as Buddhist Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Commonweal, Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation, The North American Review, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Rattle, Rolling Stone, Today's American Catholic, Transference: A Literary Journal Featuring the Art & Process of Translation, The Woven Tale Press: The Web's Premier Online Literary and Fine Art Magazine, Your Impossible Voice, and Yankee Magazine. He currently makes his home in New England, where he continues to write and translate. Although he is semi-retired, he works as a freelance editor, writer, and researcher....

Sommaire:
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....