Swenson’s lesbianism is at the heart of Margaret A. Brucia’s new biography, The Key to Everything: May Swenson, A Writer’s Life. Making use of the poet’s extensive diaries, correspondence, autobiographical pieces, and interviews, Brucia has written what is, according to Paul Crumbley and David Hoak, two Swenson scholars who contributed a foreword to the book, “the most intimate study of the poet’s life to date.”