"Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?”"
The opening line of the poem is a question posed directly to the reader. The posing of questions is a literary device strongly associated with the poetry of Mary Oliver. The craft of poetry is not merely literature for her, it is a medium for engaging her readers in intellectual discourse. This opening line ends with the first of what will eventually be seven question marks found in the poem. That is almost half of the poems 15 lines. The poem exists not for the purpose of describing a swan, therefore, but for the purpose of inviting readers to question what the swan means. More to the point, to ask questions about their current circumstances and how to alter them. The bird has been drifting on the water throughout the night because that is the nature of swans. At the rise of the sun, it rises into the air and soars through the sky because that it also its nature. The natural world of animal instinct is viewed as a utopian perfection by the poet that can—and should be—be applied by humans. The question that initiates this poem assumes is posed by a speaker who assumes the answer is no because she immediately proceeds to describe what she saw. Like many of the questions that Oliver poses in her verse, it is a bit of trickery, a rhetorical device not intended to elicit an answer, but to instigate discourse.
“Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –/An armful of white blossoms,/A perfect commotion of silk and linen”
Let there be no mistake here. Mary Oliver’s nature poetry is not a snapshot taken with a camera, but an Impressionist painting. As a nature poet, Oliver is less Ansel Adams and more Van Gogh. The natural world seen through her eyes is not the pristine realistic reproduction of the majesty of Yosemite that endows a sense of awe and wonder but is more like the vaguely realistic sunflowers suggesting something deeper, mysterious, and intensely personal. The swan is presented with imagery that is entirely metaphorical throughout, beginning with this portrait of flowers and fabric. The swan will also be compared to lilies, a snowbank, and a white cross. The description of the swan is purposely non-representative and symbolic because for Oliver nature exists as idealistic concept and utopian ideal. The swan exists not to be characterized in a way that draws attention to its actual properties, but as a metaphor for humans to project into their own dystopic reality.
“And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?/And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?/And have you changed your life?”
It is only with the final three lines of the poem that it finally becomes conclusively clear that it is not really about the title entity at all. “The Swan” may be described by some as a poem about a big white bird rising from black water into a bright sky. That is not really accurate. “The Swan” is a poem about a person describing the experience of seeing a big white bird rising from black water into a bright sky to another person is a description that is more accurate, but still doesn’t convey the whole story. It is not just about one person telling another about the swan taking off from the water into the air, it is about that person using the story to challenge the other about the circumstances of their own life. The questions are posed to the reader with no indication otherwise that they are directed toward any specific individual. If that is the case, then the speaker is making a huge assumption about her readers: whoever they may be, they are unhappy with their current circumstances in some way. This is not a wild assumption, of course. The universality of discontent is the true subject of the poem and the story of the swan changing its circumstances from cold black water to the warmth of soaring just below the clouds is another example of how nature always gets it right and always provides a lesson to learn for those who pay close attention and allow room for deep enough thoughts.
