Erin Murthy assembles the story of a life.

I’ve read a considerable number of poetry collections subtitled “New and Selected Poems” or “Collected Poems.” But it was only reading Swoon: New & Selected Poems by Erin Murphy that I realized that such a collection could also be a biography.

Murphy has assembled poems from 11 previously published collections plus a few new ones. The result is a collective story of a life, from childhood memories, through young adulthood, the arrival of children, changes in relationships, the deaths of friends, the music enjoyed, travel, vacations, worries about physical appearance, observations about celebrities.

Murphy also includes poems about poetry – poetry readings, poets, creating a poem, development of a poem, all of the elements of a poet’s life. Connect the poems about a life with the poems about poetry, and you see a poet who sees life as poetry, and poetry as life.

This is how Murphy weaves a period of living in London with the writing of poetry.

When I Think of London

I don’t think of Big Ben or Tower Bridge
or Kensington Gardens. I think of this
thin median strip in north Harrow,

three blocks from our rented row house
where many days I abandoned half-planned poems
for a walk to town. I’d find myself

stranded on a patch of grass as cars skimmed by
in the rain, always the rain. The traffic island
was like England itself, with nothing more

than a day away, the coasts almost in arms’ reach.
Once I timed it: twenty-two minutes to cross the street.
I don’t know if it was faith or trust in dumb luck

that propelled me, finally, to the other side,
toward the pulse of don’t walk, don’t walk.
A friend once told me writing a poem

is like taking a journey to the unknown
and bringing back proof that you were there.
Don’t walk, don’t walk, don’t walk. Run.

I read that poem thinking it was about London. London s only in the stage; the real point is poetry.

These poems are human. Murphy doesn’t overlook flaws, mistakes, or regrets. She writes with candor and humor. She ranges across poetic forms, including one she calls the “demi-sonnet,” which utilizes seven instead of 14 lines. The breadth and depth of the poems, the style and sheer inventiveness, says this is a poet who has mastered poetry.

Murphy is a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College. She may also be one of the most prolific writers and poets working in academia. She’s written or edited some 15 books, five in the last three years alone, with an anthology of essays in the publishing pipeline. Her first poetry collection, Science of Desire, was published in 2004; her most recent poetry collection, Mother as Conjunction, was published in 2026. She also serves as editor of The Summerset Review.

Swoon is a story of a life. It is a story of poetry and its creation. It’s the story of a poet who understands that life is poetry, and poetry is life.

Related:

Poets and Poems: Erin Murphy and Mother As Conjunction.

Photo by Liz West, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.

Browse more book reviews

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish