Swenson's earliest surviving diaries start in her early twenties when she worked for newspapers in her native Utah and then moved to New York City, where she soon determined she wanted to live and find success as a writer. Along the way she recorded her sexual daliances with both men and women, as well as her search for artistic fulfillment while enduring often desperate financial straits. 

Swenson moved in with writer and activist Anca Vrbovska Saitta in 1938, and the two were partners for the next ten years or so. Swenson continued to work odd jobs for money and sometimes typed diary entries on work stationery. There gaps in diary entries from the 1940s, either because she was less consistent in keeping up with them or they were lost at some point. 

With Anca for ten years and then with Pearl Schwarz for seventeen after that, Swenson became more open with her diaries, even occasionally addressing Anca or Pearl directly, or in the case of Pearl, encouraging her to write her own account of an event or other matter. As Swenson's success as a poet grew in the 1950s, so did her entries about her interactions with other writers, with editors, and with artists. 

The year 1960 was an important one for Swenson. She and Pearl traveled extensively through Europe as a result of a grant that Swenson won. Throughout their travels Swenson recorded her diary on postcards she purchased along the way. These are an exceptionally rich resource that capture a pivotal moment in time of a poet's life as well as the places she visited.