Paul Swenson

PAUL SWENSON {[email protected]} has published Iced at the Ward/Burned at the Stake, and Other Poems (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2003), with his second collection forthcoming: In Sleep, & Other Poems (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 2011).

Utah Takes a Holiday: An Interview with Paul Swenson

Articles/Essays – Volume 11, No. 1

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Nostrums in the Newsroom

Articles/Essays – Volume 10, No. 3

Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Six was not a dull year for the 127-year-old Deseret News. Melvin Dummar, a Box Elder County service station operator, was named, along with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,…

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Mama and Daddy Standin’ By

Articles/Essays – Volume 26, No. 3

Best thing that ever happened 
In church was when Martha 
Got Nancy to sing “Summertime” 
On Mother’s Day— 

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Negative Space

Articles/Essays – Volume 28, No. 1

It’s hard being Mormon Mormon mind regards nipples

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Brides of the Afternoon

Articles/Essays – Volume 28, No. 2

White brides, dark grooms 
lustrous silks on 
an orange afternoon, 
scuffing through dry leaves 

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Toni’s Song

Articles/Essays – Volume 28, No. 2

She prays in the shower, lifts 
her face to the streaming water 
god, to the shining metallic head 

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Black Moroni

Articles/Essays – Volume 29, No. 4

Painted on the wall behind the seats where choir sings 
See the shining figure in a steep green wood 
Angel wears a shirtwaist robe, fabric wing as thin as filament
He looks downslope where Joseph kneels, treasure spread in dirt

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Dragging Fanny

Articles/Essays – Volume 32, No. 1

Her last hymn in the book—and they’re dragging it.
Behold, her royal army’s old. Band of stragglers,
banners furled, tired voices buckling the pews. 

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Jesus Lost

Articles/Essays – Volume 32, No. 4

Do you know this picture, asks
the magazine. Yes, I’ve seen
this man before. I’m sure 
that clean, bronze brow, those
dark eyes’ intensity surprised

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Martin in Me

Articles/Essays – Volume 38, No. 2

Three times I take his words into my mouth 
and make them thunder from my tongue. 
His final speech will not remain unsung in me. 

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The Long-Distance Mormon | R. A. Christmas, The Kingdom of God or Nothing!

Articles/Essays – Volume 42, No. 3

With his poem, “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Mormon,” R. A. (Robert Allen) Christmas, among the most flickeringly idiosyncratic lights in the Mormon literary cosmos, may have (purposely or unconsciously) described himself as a living exemplar of the poem’s evocative title. The poem’s protagonist, however, is a high priests’ quorum instructor named Melvin, who was married for fifty years to a Mormon woman before he joined the Church and took his wife to the temple—but only after realizing he was too old to continue playing tennis on Sunday. 

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Accidental Mystic

Articles/Essays – Volume 44, No. 1

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Marginalia

Articles/Essays – Volume 44, No. 1

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