PORT DESIRE by Elizabeth Swann

In Elizabeth Swann’s aptly titled Port Desire, she examines the forces that draw us equally to the safety of harbor and to the hazards of the open ocean, open road, open heart. She tests and braids these contending pulls in circumstances ranging from her own personal and family histories to the voyage of a despairing Charles Darwin and the crime spree of a Bonnie Parker “beyond redemption.” She enters into the eyes of artists to compare their conceptions of Mary Magdalene, contemplates the flight of swallows, and studies the bones of the archaeopteryx.

In addition to a wide-ranging intelligence, there is wisdom in these poems. Swann knows that often our strongest desire is for a simple bit of luck, a wishbone’s break or “one perfect aberration / four fast-wilting leaves” of a four-leaf clover. And sometimes we give in to despair, only to be struck with a flash of insight that sends us back to the trash to rescue those bits we’ve already discarded.

In all of these poems, too, there is the skillful music of Swann’s lines. Even in the least likely of scenes, her sounds convince us that there is much to love: ‘Behind the dilapidated barn,’ she writes in “Swallows,” ‘shadows alone grow, / a dim shroud / pulled across drought-hard ground.’

These are rich and rewarding poems, summoning us to acknowledge our own courage and the value to our lives of both port and desire. Elizabeth Swann is a poet whose work deserves a wide audience.

–Marjorie Stelmach, author of Bent Upon Light

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]