Swan Electric

by April Bernard

Book Overview

April Bernard's idiosyncratic and profoundly emotional voice combines flights of fancy, moral sternness, and wit in broadly explorative poems--from a memoir sequence about the East Village in the 1980s, to "disheveled" sonnets of self-interrogation, to darkly comic hallucinations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393325083
• ISBN13: 9780393325089
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 90 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Structural Balance Key to Deciphering Collection's Puzzles

April Bernard is not new to poetry. Swan Electric, her latest book of poems, follows two previous collections of poetry and a novel. But Swan Electric is a work standing on its own. It is a soulful purveyor of everyday humanity's many schismatic sides. The reader does not have to know Bernard's previous styles of writing in order to understand Swan Electric, but understanding the book is certainly difficult. The heart of Bernard's difficulty exists in finding out just what that the book's statements and meanings are. While the messages are often invisible at first glance, Bernard stylistically links her poems together through arcing thematic patterns. The specific structure of the book, the division into four sections, helps the reader to understand the self and the world around the self. The book's first section is a series of Bernard's "Dishevelled Sonnets." Most of these poems are loosely based on the Shakespearean sonnet, though by the end of the section, as seen in "Music through the Ceiling," the form has dissipated almost entirely. The metaphoric erosion of form is reflected through the poems' speakers. In the first poem, "See It Does Rise," the speaker retorts purposefully that what may not have been believed should now be believed; however, by the end the speaker is apathetic. The following poem, "Tatters," combines a similar reactionary stance with a burst of feminine pride. In "Dome," Bernard's speaker portrays moody solidarity. The poems of the first section find aid and power in nature, and have focuses on character, voice, and direction, and independence. Yet the final two poems cover up all previous forcefulness and aggression with self-pity, grace, and a focus on the delicate. The second section, "Song of Yes and No," takes place in New York City, locale seemingly much more comfortable. The poems' speakers are more impersonal, and their interaction with others is more inclusive and positive. While some of the poems are more explicitly related to city life than others, the focus on nature from the first section is nowhere in sight. Bernard frequently references technology, man-made environments, and unnatural constructs. These themes serve as structures that pin the second set of poems together. There are no more cries to forms of the past, like the sonnet. Instead there are poems like "Dial-an-Edict," which rely on the speaker being a part of a group. Bernard uses the second section to show the benefits and social functions of the city. Even if the dark flaws of humans subtly creep into each poem, the city life of the second section serves as a positive theme. The second section juxtaposes the first section's independence and isolation. The unnamed third section in Swan Electric transforms the first two sections' ambiguously personal and impersonal emotions into a tour de force of uncovered personality. The poems revert back to the independence of the sonnets, but are blunt, radiant, and much more elec

A good professor, a good poet

I have been lucky enough to take classes with April Bernard (she teaches at my college--Bennington) and her passion for language is as evident in the classroom as it is in her writings. This is a must read for anyone who loves language and/or for anyone who wants to be a writer.