Swan, What Shores?

A lyrical litany of the human condition, this collection aims to give the reader understanding of the subject matter using depth, wit, imagination and compassion.

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Winner of the Colorado Book Award;

Winner of the Willa Literary Award

As heard on Public Radio International's The Writer's Almanac!

Full of music and evocative word play, Veronica Patterson's Swan, What Shores? offers alluring poems varied in form and inventive in approach. In language that is both precise and lyrical, Patterson's work, like much of the best poetry, plumbs the human condition with depth, wit, and, above all, compassion.

The poems offer fine surprises, from the lyrical litany of "The Riddle of My Want" ("the stride of your eyes / a summering of skin") to the unusual elegy "Three Photographs Not of My Father" to the mysteries embodied in "Where Are My Swans?": "All movement in their dreams is theirs / that glide-without-haste, for what core of the universe / has to hurry?"

Swan, What Shores? marks the blossoming of a major poetic talent.