Mary Swann

[dotinthesky]

Although these questions are for K., feel free to answer them too if you have also read Carol Shields' Mary Swann:

1. Of the four main characters, which one was your favourite? Which one was your least favourite? Which one would you enjoy hanging out with?

2. Of the fragments we read from Mary Swann's poetry, together with the final poem, what do you make of her as a poet? (perhaps you can imagine here that you were also attending the symposium.)

3. What do you think of Mary Swann the person, and of her murder?

4. Sarah Maloney says at one point that women carry all their lives the "full freight of their mother's words." Can this be applied to Frances Swann?

5. Rose says, with relation to the Swann museum exhibition, that "the charm of falsehood is not that it distorts reality, but that it creates reality afresh." How do you think this statement fits in with the characters, Mary Swann's poetry, the book itself?

Comments

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I went through conflicting feelings about her poetry. At first, I liked it and wanted to read more; but then I got suspicious that it was a joke on the part of Shields and that i was being suckered in with the rest of them - was it really that good? But I nevertheless felt compelled and mystified every time snippets were given, reading them many times over in order to comprehend what Swann was trying to say, that I think my conclusion is that I liked the poems too.

Emily Dickinson rocks. She was my fave in high school (must revisit her!)