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Almost Invisible: Poems
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2012)From Pulitzer Prize–winner Mark Strand comes an exquisitely witty and poignant series of prose poems. Sometimes appearing as pure prose, sometimes as impure poetry, but always with Strand’s clarity and simplicity of style, they are like riddles, their answers vanishing just as they appear within reach. Fable, domestic satire, meditation, joke, and fantasy all come together in what is arguably the liveliest, most entertaining book that Strand has yet written.
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
68 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
28 people are currently reading
799 people want to read
About the author
Mark Strand
180 books267 followersMark Strand was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, essayist, and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. He was a professor of English at Columbia University and also taught at numerous other colleges and universities.
Strand also wrote children's books and art criticism, helped edit several poetry anthologies and translated Spanish poet Rafael Alberti.
He is survived by a son, a daughter and a sister.
Strand also wrote children's books and art criticism, helped edit several poetry anthologies and translated Spanish poet Rafael Alberti.
He is survived by a son, a daughter and a sister.
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July 15, 2020
In the old days, my thoughts like tiny sparks would flare up in the almost dark of consciousness and I would transcribe them, and page after page shone with a light that I called my own. I would sit at my desk amazed by what had just happened. And even as I watched the lights fade and my thoughts become small, meaningless memorials in the afterglow of so much promise, I was still amazed. And when they disappeared, as they inevitably did, I was ready to begin again, ready to sit in the dark for hours and wait for even a single spark, though I knew it would shed almost no light at all. What I had not realized then, but now know only too well, is that sparks carry within them the wish to be relieved of the burden of brightness.
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December 31, 2016Mark Strand was one of my professors back in the day (I cross-registered in one of his semester-long poetry workshops for advanced undergrads back when I was a second-year medical student), but this is only the second poetry collection of his that I've read from cover to cover. (Goodreads helpfully reminds me that the first was Strand's Man and Camel, which I read and reviewed here in 2010.)
The slim 2012 volume Almost Invisible, which clocks in at a modest 48 pages in length, was Strand's last published collection before his 2014 death (not counting his Collected Poems). It consists almost entirely of prose poems of the wryly humorous, absurdistly surreal, often domestically situated, narrative kind that Strand himself, alongside his contemporaries Russell Edson and James Tate, pioneered in the mid to late 20th century. (My understanding is that these three men formed a sort of mutual admiration society; Prof. Strand one day informed my workshop classmates, in an air of indisputable factual authority, that "Russell Edson is the funniest living American poet.")
In his introduction to the indispensable anthology Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, editor David Lehman singles out Strand's 1978 collection The Monument as a milestone in the history of American prose poetry: according to Lehman, The Monument was the first collection of prose poems by an U.S. poet to be seriously considered for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, although it was ultimately passed over for that honor because Pulitzer judge Louis Simpson was too old-fashioned to countenance the idea that a prose poem could ever be a "real" poem. Well, now it's 2016, and the mainstream definition of poetry has irreversibly expanded to include prose poems (and more -- congrats again to Bob Dylan on his Nobel!). In the years since Mark Strand's 1978 Pulitzer snub, many books rich in prose poems (beginning with Charles Simic's 1991 The World Doesn't End) have won Pulitzers, and just two years ago, a book heavy on prose poems, Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, was simultaneously a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism (it won the former).
Almost Invisible, then, provides us a view of the dying master of prose poetry continuing in the craft that he himself had pioneered and nigh perfected, a craft that once went unrecognized and snubbed and lonely. In the last years of Strand's life, it no longer went unrecognized and snubbed, but, if the general tenor of these poems can be taken as evidence, it continued to bear a strain of loneliness in it. These are the poems of an old, sick man realizing he is sick and old and in pain, attempting to come to terms with his impending demise, his impending confrontation with an eternity we must all confront alone. Earlier this year, I read and reviewed the poetry of Max Ritvo, another U.S. poet who recently fell victim to sarcoma (Ritvo died of Ewing sarcoma in 2016, Strand of liposarcoma in 2014), and in my review I mentioned how Ritvo's poetry collections sometimes read like a modern version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a sort of secular tutorial to help prepare us for our deaths to come. Strand's Almost Invisible struck me similarly, full of glimpses of unearthly dark morbid wisdom from someone on the verge of the ultimate metamorphosis.
This is not to say the poems are not funny, and funny in a way that is clearly distinct from the ways in which Tate and Edson are funny. After all, the once "deadly handsome, tall and rugged" Strand winkingly cultivated the persona of a dandy and gourmand all his life, and the poems in Almost Invisible are wittily strewn with the kind of stage props beloved by men who style themselves dandies and gourmands: flawlessly cooked pot roasts, ballrooms lit by sparking chandeliers, castle moats full of swans, etc. And the contrast that these kinds of deliberately overblown trappings makes with the bleak condition of our real lives can often be quite funny, as we see every day in the works of contemporary poets like, say, Austin Allen and Frederick Seidel.
In Almost Invisible, does Strand ever reach the heights he achieved in the best poems that he wrote at the peak of his career, poems like, say, my always-favorite, "The Tunnel"? My personal answer would be "Not quite," but still, there are a few poems here that remind me strongly of "The Tunnel" in their uncanny fabulistic power -- poems like "Futility in Key West" and "Clear in the September Light". In these poems, complete with Edvard-Munch-esque little men flapping their arms in Edward-Hopper-esque front yards, Strand re-presents and represents us with what may be his most indelible, most iconic image: that of the modern man lacking in self-awareness, unable to see that the Other whom he spies on and judges harshly is no Other at all, but is merely himself.
The slim 2012 volume Almost Invisible, which clocks in at a modest 48 pages in length, was Strand's last published collection before his 2014 death (not counting his Collected Poems). It consists almost entirely of prose poems of the wryly humorous, absurdistly surreal, often domestically situated, narrative kind that Strand himself, alongside his contemporaries Russell Edson and James Tate, pioneered in the mid to late 20th century. (My understanding is that these three men formed a sort of mutual admiration society; Prof. Strand one day informed my workshop classmates, in an air of indisputable factual authority, that "Russell Edson is the funniest living American poet.")
In his introduction to the indispensable anthology Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, editor David Lehman singles out Strand's 1978 collection The Monument as a milestone in the history of American prose poetry: according to Lehman, The Monument was the first collection of prose poems by an U.S. poet to be seriously considered for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, although it was ultimately passed over for that honor because Pulitzer judge Louis Simpson was too old-fashioned to countenance the idea that a prose poem could ever be a "real" poem. Well, now it's 2016, and the mainstream definition of poetry has irreversibly expanded to include prose poems (and more -- congrats again to Bob Dylan on his Nobel!). In the years since Mark Strand's 1978 Pulitzer snub, many books rich in prose poems (beginning with Charles Simic's 1991 The World Doesn't End) have won Pulitzers, and just two years ago, a book heavy on prose poems, Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, was simultaneously a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism (it won the former).
Almost Invisible, then, provides us a view of the dying master of prose poetry continuing in the craft that he himself had pioneered and nigh perfected, a craft that once went unrecognized and snubbed and lonely. In the last years of Strand's life, it no longer went unrecognized and snubbed, but, if the general tenor of these poems can be taken as evidence, it continued to bear a strain of loneliness in it. These are the poems of an old, sick man realizing he is sick and old and in pain, attempting to come to terms with his impending demise, his impending confrontation with an eternity we must all confront alone. Earlier this year, I read and reviewed the poetry of Max Ritvo, another U.S. poet who recently fell victim to sarcoma (Ritvo died of Ewing sarcoma in 2016, Strand of liposarcoma in 2014), and in my review I mentioned how Ritvo's poetry collections sometimes read like a modern version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a sort of secular tutorial to help prepare us for our deaths to come. Strand's Almost Invisible struck me similarly, full of glimpses of unearthly dark morbid wisdom from someone on the verge of the ultimate metamorphosis.
This is not to say the poems are not funny, and funny in a way that is clearly distinct from the ways in which Tate and Edson are funny. After all, the once "deadly handsome, tall and rugged" Strand winkingly cultivated the persona of a dandy and gourmand all his life, and the poems in Almost Invisible are wittily strewn with the kind of stage props beloved by men who style themselves dandies and gourmands: flawlessly cooked pot roasts, ballrooms lit by sparking chandeliers, castle moats full of swans, etc. And the contrast that these kinds of deliberately overblown trappings makes with the bleak condition of our real lives can often be quite funny, as we see every day in the works of contemporary poets like, say, Austin Allen and Frederick Seidel.
In Almost Invisible, does Strand ever reach the heights he achieved in the best poems that he wrote at the peak of his career, poems like, say, my always-favorite, "The Tunnel"? My personal answer would be "Not quite," but still, there are a few poems here that remind me strongly of "The Tunnel" in their uncanny fabulistic power -- poems like "Futility in Key West" and "Clear in the September Light". In these poems, complete with Edvard-Munch-esque little men flapping their arms in Edward-Hopper-esque front yards, Strand re-presents and represents us with what may be his most indelible, most iconic image: that of the modern man lacking in self-awareness, unable to see that the Other whom he spies on and judges harshly is no Other at all, but is merely himself.
July 22, 2020
Harmony in the Boudoir
After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more behind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her. "So you see," he says, kicking off his slippers, "I am more than what I have led you to believe I am." "Oh, you silly man," says his wife, "of course you are. I find just thinking of you having so many selves receding into nothingness is very exciting. That you barely exist as you are couldn't please me more."
***
The Buried Melancholy of the Poet
...From what season had they fallen, from what idea of grace had they strayed?...This was the summer he wandered out into the miraculous night, into the sea of dark, as if for the first time, to shed his own light, but what he shed was the dark, what he found was the night.
***
The Enigma of the Infitesimal
You've seen them at dusk, walking along the shore, seen them standing in doorways, leaning from windows, or straddling the slow-moving edge of a shadow. Lovers of the in-between, they are neither here nor there, neither in nor out. Poor souls, they are driven to experience the impossible. Even at night, they lie in bed with one eye closed and the other open, hoping to catch the last second of consciousness and the first of sleep, to inhabit that no-man's-land, that beautiful place, to behold as only a god might, the luminous conjunction of nothing and all.
***
A Dream of Travel
...With him I could have gone to the sea, the wrinkled, sorrowing sea, and who knows what I could have done there - turned wind into marble, made stars shiver in the sunlight.
***
Provisional Eternity
A man and a woman lay in bed. "Just one more time," said the man, "just one more time." "Why do you keep saying that?" said the woman. "Because I never want it to end," said the man. "What don't you want to end?" said the woman. "This," said the man, "this never wanting it to end."
After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more behind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her. "So you see," he says, kicking off his slippers, "I am more than what I have led you to believe I am." "Oh, you silly man," says his wife, "of course you are. I find just thinking of you having so many selves receding into nothingness is very exciting. That you barely exist as you are couldn't please me more."
***
The Buried Melancholy of the Poet
...From what season had they fallen, from what idea of grace had they strayed?...This was the summer he wandered out into the miraculous night, into the sea of dark, as if for the first time, to shed his own light, but what he shed was the dark, what he found was the night.
***
The Enigma of the Infitesimal
You've seen them at dusk, walking along the shore, seen them standing in doorways, leaning from windows, or straddling the slow-moving edge of a shadow. Lovers of the in-between, they are neither here nor there, neither in nor out. Poor souls, they are driven to experience the impossible. Even at night, they lie in bed with one eye closed and the other open, hoping to catch the last second of consciousness and the first of sleep, to inhabit that no-man's-land, that beautiful place, to behold as only a god might, the luminous conjunction of nothing and all.
***
A Dream of Travel
...With him I could have gone to the sea, the wrinkled, sorrowing sea, and who knows what I could have done there - turned wind into marble, made stars shiver in the sunlight.
***
Provisional Eternity
A man and a woman lay in bed. "Just one more time," said the man, "just one more time." "Why do you keep saying that?" said the woman. "Because I never want it to end," said the man. "What don't you want to end?" said the woman. "This," said the man, "this never wanting it to end."
May 15, 2020
"A banker strutted into the brothel of blind women. “I am a shepherd,” he announced, “and blow my shepherd’s pipe as often as I can, but I have lost my flock and feel that I am at a critical point in my life.” “I can tell by the way you talk,” said one of the women, “that you are a banker only pretending to be a shepherd and that you want us to pity you, which we do because you have stooped so low as to try to make fools of us.” “My dear,” said the banker to the same woman, “I can tell that you are a rich widow looking for a little excitement and are not blind at all.” “This observation suggests,” said the woman, “that you may be a shepherd after all, for what kind of rich widow would find excitement being a whore only to end up with a banker?” “Exactly,” said the banker."
what does this mean? do men have brains? can they think? we just don't know.
“I’ve heard that all vaginas up there, even the most open, honest, and energetic, are shut down, and that all testicles, even the most forthright and gifted, swing dreamily among the clouds like little chandeliers.”
honestly, what's this?
"One summer when he was still young he stood at the window and wondered where they had gone, those women who sat by the ocean, watching, waiting for something that would never arrive, the wind light against their skin, sending loose strands of hair across their lips. From what season had they fallen, from what idea of grace had they strayed? It was long since he had seen them in their lonely splendor, heavy in their idleness, enacting the sad story of hope abandoned. This was the summer he wandered out into the miraculous night, into the sea of dark, as if for the first time, to shed his own light, but what he shed was the dark, what he found was the night."
this is why i don't read men. the may be able to write well, invoke certain moods well, but then they have to spoil it in their approach to women, and reveal themselves to be crap jesuses.
what does this mean? do men have brains? can they think? we just don't know.
“I’ve heard that all vaginas up there, even the most open, honest, and energetic, are shut down, and that all testicles, even the most forthright and gifted, swing dreamily among the clouds like little chandeliers.”
honestly, what's this?
"One summer when he was still young he stood at the window and wondered where they had gone, those women who sat by the ocean, watching, waiting for something that would never arrive, the wind light against their skin, sending loose strands of hair across their lips. From what season had they fallen, from what idea of grace had they strayed? It was long since he had seen them in their lonely splendor, heavy in their idleness, enacting the sad story of hope abandoned. This was the summer he wandered out into the miraculous night, into the sea of dark, as if for the first time, to shed his own light, but what he shed was the dark, what he found was the night."
this is why i don't read men. the may be able to write well, invoke certain moods well, but then they have to spoil it in their approach to women, and reveal themselves to be crap jesuses.
July 3, 2020
Mooi, maar helaas niets tegengekomen wat mooier was dan het ene gedicht wat ik al van hem kende. Hieronder dat gedicht, omdat het een van de mooiste dingen is die ik las dit jaar.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter
BY MARK STRAND
It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment where I lived. When I got there I flicked on the light and saw on the table an envelope with my name on it. Where was the clock? Where was the calendar? The handwriting was my father’s, but he had been dead for forty years. As one might, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, he was alive, living a secret life somewhere nearby. How else to explain the envelope? To steady myself, I sat down, opened it, and pulled out the letter. “Dear Son,” was the way it began. “Dear Son” and then nothing.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter
BY MARK STRAND
It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment where I lived. When I got there I flicked on the light and saw on the table an envelope with my name on it. Where was the clock? Where was the calendar? The handwriting was my father’s, but he had been dead for forty years. As one might, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, he was alive, living a secret life somewhere nearby. How else to explain the envelope? To steady myself, I sat down, opened it, and pulled out the letter. “Dear Son,” was the way it began. “Dear Son” and then nothing.
January 24, 2020
مارک استرند؛ عجیب و عمیق مثل پسوا
November 27, 2016
Me ha gustado bastante. Es un conjunto de poemas escritos en prosa que sin duda te harán reflexionar.
La pluma del autor es impecable y aunque sí que es verdad que no conseguí identificarme con muchos de ellos, sí que me encantó conocer la forma de pensar del autor y ver su huella en cada palabra.
Un poemario bastante recomentable que se lee en poco más de treinta minutos.
La pluma del autor es impecable y aunque sí que es verdad que no conseguí identificarme con muchos de ellos, sí que me encantó conocer la forma de pensar del autor y ver su huella en cada palabra.
Un poemario bastante recomentable que se lee en poco más de treinta minutos.
July 27, 2012
Mark Strand's surprising (after Blizzard of One) collection of prose poems starts off with an epigraph from Mr. Micawber ("something will turn up!") of David Copperfield. This is a signal to hold on to our sense of humor* as we read our way through some dark – but hardly bitter – reflections on the end of life, the end of talent, the ends of all kinds of things that open unexpectedly into dream corridors, or to gentle figura appearing at the edge of consciousness, rueful images of our distant selves.
Here's one of my favorites:
* Another wry laugh, playing off the title: the cover design by Chip Kidd (photo by Vincent Laforet). It takes a moment to register – planes of color that resolve into a banged-up freeway underneath a very green stretch of lawn. And then you notice a little man in a suit on the lawn, his gut sagging, staring up at the camera's eye with a WTF expression. –Exactly.
Here's one of my favorites:
The Buried Melancholy of the PoetAnother, which in its mood reminds me of Du Fu, Pessoa, Charles Simic…
One summer when he was still young he stood at the window and wondered where they had gone, those women who sat by the ocean, watching, waiting for something that would never arrive, the wind light against their skin, sending loose strands of hair across their lips. From what season had they fallen, from what idea of grace had they strayed? It was long since he had seen them in their lonely splendor, heavy in their idleness, enacting the sad story of hope abandoned. This was the summer he wandered out in the miraculous night, into the sea of dark, as if for the first time, to shed his own light, but what he shed was the dark, what he found was the night.
Like a Leaf Carried Off by the Wind_________________________
After leaving work, where he is not known and where his job is a mystery even to himself, he walks down dimly lit streets and dark alleys to his room at the other end of town in the rear of a rundown apartment house. It is winter and he walks hunched over with the collar of his coat turned up. When he gets to his room, he sits at a small table and looks at the book open before him. Its pages are blank, which is why he is able to gaze at them for hours.
* Another wry laugh, playing off the title: the cover design by Chip Kidd (photo by Vincent Laforet). It takes a moment to register – planes of color that resolve into a banged-up freeway underneath a very green stretch of lawn. And then you notice a little man in a suit on the lawn, his gut sagging, staring up at the camera's eye with a WTF expression. –Exactly.
February 18, 2019
At the heart of both comedy and tragedy is the defiance of expectation, and Strand’s collection Almost Invisible explores both poles.
While I’ve struggled with what I’ve perceived to be Strand’s bland didacticism in the past – his tendency to center on small, prosaic “illustrations” of life, such as in “Provisional Eternity” – I found this collection not only entertaining but helpful, particularly when reading it as a catalogue of “unstuck” moments — of Strand turning the prose poem ‘round just when you think you’ve got it under your thumb. In this sense, the book almost reads as a catalogue or demonstrative manual for poets: what to do when the poem gets stuck. 100 different ways for the poem to come alive again. To this end, Strand is quite successful.
Some of my notes when reading through this collection (a couple of times – it’s surprisingly re-readable despite the extensive use of… surprise): a poem can exercise its capacity to go meta to great effect. See one of my favorite poems from this collection, “Clear in the September Light,” which begins with the description of a man, upset, and a dog, but ends with this: “What he does has nothing to do with me. His desperation is not my desperation. I do not stand under trees and look at small houses. I have no dog.” The sudden cruelty of the speaker is not as delightful as the reader’s sudden realization that the speaker doesn’t identify with the man he is describing – a common assumption when heading into a poem in the third person.
Another lovely technique involves undercutting the reader’s expectations of the poem’s next turns, as in “The Triumph of the Infinite”: “Across the room a bearded man in a pale-green suit turned to me and said, “Better get ready, we’re taking the long way.” “Now I’ll wake up,” I thought, but I was wrong. We began our journey over golden tundra and patches of ice…” Here, the reader’s quality of attention is actually enhanced after this midway turn; the tundra and the patches of ice seem realer for the fact that they are proven not to be dreams. And that is perhaps the other function of Strand’s constant turns: to agitate the audience into a heightened awareness of the language itself.
Of course, no review of this book could be complete without mention of Strand’s peculiar humor through insistence — my favorite example being in “Dream Testicles, Vanished Vaginas,” in which Mildred speaks to Horace about “all vaginas up there, even the most open, honest and energetic… and all testicles, even the most forthright and gifted.” These very specific descriptions remind me of Anne Carson’s gift for adjectives, but they carry a further charm via their dramatic irony: Mildred truly believes that these are the most natural terms with which to describe these sex organs, and the distance between her belief and ours is a delight to experience.
My one difficulty with this collection was that it didn’t read like one right away; for some reason, the collection didn’t grow in my good graces with every fantastic poem. Instead, the poems seemed one-offs, and even though I liked most of the poems, I found it hard to say I had a good impression of the collection overall. Still, this seems a reasonable price to pay for what I’d call a successful catalogue of tricks – and a book that, for all its non-linear qualities, invites a second, third, fourth visit.
My final thought is a note of admiration: there is an understated ambition to this book, which involves the idea of filling it entirely with prose poems. It is to Strand’s credit that he makes it seem so easy, and keeps us involved the whole way through with remarkable flexibility and wit.
While I’ve struggled with what I’ve perceived to be Strand’s bland didacticism in the past – his tendency to center on small, prosaic “illustrations” of life, such as in “Provisional Eternity” – I found this collection not only entertaining but helpful, particularly when reading it as a catalogue of “unstuck” moments — of Strand turning the prose poem ‘round just when you think you’ve got it under your thumb. In this sense, the book almost reads as a catalogue or demonstrative manual for poets: what to do when the poem gets stuck. 100 different ways for the poem to come alive again. To this end, Strand is quite successful.
Some of my notes when reading through this collection (a couple of times – it’s surprisingly re-readable despite the extensive use of… surprise): a poem can exercise its capacity to go meta to great effect. See one of my favorite poems from this collection, “Clear in the September Light,” which begins with the description of a man, upset, and a dog, but ends with this: “What he does has nothing to do with me. His desperation is not my desperation. I do not stand under trees and look at small houses. I have no dog.” The sudden cruelty of the speaker is not as delightful as the reader’s sudden realization that the speaker doesn’t identify with the man he is describing – a common assumption when heading into a poem in the third person.
Another lovely technique involves undercutting the reader’s expectations of the poem’s next turns, as in “The Triumph of the Infinite”: “Across the room a bearded man in a pale-green suit turned to me and said, “Better get ready, we’re taking the long way.” “Now I’ll wake up,” I thought, but I was wrong. We began our journey over golden tundra and patches of ice…” Here, the reader’s quality of attention is actually enhanced after this midway turn; the tundra and the patches of ice seem realer for the fact that they are proven not to be dreams. And that is perhaps the other function of Strand’s constant turns: to agitate the audience into a heightened awareness of the language itself.
Of course, no review of this book could be complete without mention of Strand’s peculiar humor through insistence — my favorite example being in “Dream Testicles, Vanished Vaginas,” in which Mildred speaks to Horace about “all vaginas up there, even the most open, honest and energetic… and all testicles, even the most forthright and gifted.” These very specific descriptions remind me of Anne Carson’s gift for adjectives, but they carry a further charm via their dramatic irony: Mildred truly believes that these are the most natural terms with which to describe these sex organs, and the distance between her belief and ours is a delight to experience.
My one difficulty with this collection was that it didn’t read like one right away; for some reason, the collection didn’t grow in my good graces with every fantastic poem. Instead, the poems seemed one-offs, and even though I liked most of the poems, I found it hard to say I had a good impression of the collection overall. Still, this seems a reasonable price to pay for what I’d call a successful catalogue of tricks – and a book that, for all its non-linear qualities, invites a second, third, fourth visit.
My final thought is a note of admiration: there is an understated ambition to this book, which involves the idea of filling it entirely with prose poems. It is to Strand’s credit that he makes it seem so easy, and keeps us involved the whole way through with remarkable flexibility and wit.
July 4, 2025
At NULC 2023, an attendee asked Louise Glück what poets she recommends reading. She refused to answer the question, stating that she does not give recommendations. Moments later, however, she acquiesced and said that she is a proponent of her friend Mark Strand’s work. She noted this collection of his specifically, commenting on how it challenged her initial view that prose poetry is not poetry at all, as somehow Strand’s poems do something to cross over the prosaic boundary and manage to be, well, poetry.
Curious, I finally read the collection for myself. My take: I agree with Glück: these poems are poems. However, these poems also feel like prose. Like flash. Like parables. And that’s because they are prose, flash, and parables. So what then also makes them poems? I credit the wit and wordplay and whimsy of these poems. Many contain the volta, jarring twists used for surprise and nuance.
The collection also seems to have an awareness of the in-between space it inhabits, focusing on the subject of liminal space itself and using the prose form to accentuate this realization. In “The Enigma of the Infinitesimal,” for example, the speaker meditates on a couple stuck in liminal space. They are described as “strad- / dling the slow-moving edge.” Literally, the content is about the in-between, but it is not merely prose as the enjambment feels intentional. Of course the poet would want a word to “strad- /dle” a line break. And so it clearly expresses itself as a piece that straddles prose and poetry.
This is also a collection that contains banger after banger. I found myself liking a number of the poems, including “Dream Testicles, Vanished Vaginas” (an unhinged view of heaven that was absolutely fantastic), “The Buried Melancholy of the Poet” (didn’t end how I thought it would—love the focus on the dark, which is a motif throughout), “Poem of the Spanish Poet” (so fun how Strand is able to tell a story that justifies a poem with line breaks), “The Nietzchean Hourglass, or The Future’s Misfortune” (a fun paradox), and “An Event About Which No More Need Be Said” (captures the title succinctly and is also quite a story—had me exclaiming ‘what?’). Overall, a worthwhile read, especially if you love a little genre-blending.
Curious, I finally read the collection for myself. My take: I agree with Glück: these poems are poems. However, these poems also feel like prose. Like flash. Like parables. And that’s because they are prose, flash, and parables. So what then also makes them poems? I credit the wit and wordplay and whimsy of these poems. Many contain the volta, jarring twists used for surprise and nuance.
The collection also seems to have an awareness of the in-between space it inhabits, focusing on the subject of liminal space itself and using the prose form to accentuate this realization. In “The Enigma of the Infinitesimal,” for example, the speaker meditates on a couple stuck in liminal space. They are described as “strad- / dling the slow-moving edge.” Literally, the content is about the in-between, but it is not merely prose as the enjambment feels intentional. Of course the poet would want a word to “strad- /dle” a line break. And so it clearly expresses itself as a piece that straddles prose and poetry.
This is also a collection that contains banger after banger. I found myself liking a number of the poems, including “Dream Testicles, Vanished Vaginas” (an unhinged view of heaven that was absolutely fantastic), “The Buried Melancholy of the Poet” (didn’t end how I thought it would—love the focus on the dark, which is a motif throughout), “Poem of the Spanish Poet” (so fun how Strand is able to tell a story that justifies a poem with line breaks), “The Nietzchean Hourglass, or The Future’s Misfortune” (a fun paradox), and “An Event About Which No More Need Be Said” (captures the title succinctly and is also quite a story—had me exclaiming ‘what?’). Overall, a worthwhile read, especially if you love a little genre-blending.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 22, 2020
Harmony in the Boudoir
After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and
tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything
he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each
word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more be-
hind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true
self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her.
“So you see,” he says, kicking off his slippers, “I am more than
what I have led you to believe I am.” “Oh, you silly man,” says
his wife, “of course you are. I find that just thinking of you
having so many selves receding into nothingness is very excit-
ing. That you barely exist as you are couldn’t please me more.
After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and
tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything
he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each
word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more be-
hind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true
self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her.
“So you see,” he says, kicking off his slippers, “I am more than
what I have led you to believe I am.” “Oh, you silly man,” says
his wife, “of course you are. I find that just thinking of you
having so many selves receding into nothingness is very excit-
ing. That you barely exist as you are couldn’t please me more.
January 17, 2020
I appreciate most of this. I think when referring to women and their anatomy, Strand can be a bit crass. What do you call a woman who enjoys sex and gets paid for it? Nothing but her name, but I guess he didn't get the memo. He does, however, have gorgeous lines and imagery. Some are chalked full of vivid descriptions, where others are simple, and both work for me.
Others who have read the book have said that they didn't understand many of the poems or felt too distanced by them, but I think that the vagueness and distance are highly philosophical. I personally don't think anyone could write about dying without having an existential crisis.
Others who have read the book have said that they didn't understand many of the poems or felt too distanced by them, but I think that the vagueness and distance are highly philosophical. I personally don't think anyone could write about dying without having an existential crisis.
March 1, 2025
I really liked the epigraph:
"Gentlemen," returned Mr. Micawber, "do with me as you will! I am a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants - I beg your pardon, I should have said the elements." - Charles Dickens
While the title is clearly a nod to the intended weightlessness of these prose poems, a more fitting title might have been A Fart in the Wind. I tried to have room for their slightness to amount to something, but they felt too whimsical, too privileged, hardly any darkness or anger.
"Gentlemen," returned Mr. Micawber, "do with me as you will! I am a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants - I beg your pardon, I should have said the elements." - Charles Dickens
While the title is clearly a nod to the intended weightlessness of these prose poems, a more fitting title might have been A Fart in the Wind. I tried to have room for their slightness to amount to something, but they felt too whimsical, too privileged, hardly any darkness or anger.
December 2, 2018
My introduction into the work of Mark Strand did not disappoint. Great prose poems that teeter between tearful and hysterical. I can't wait to read more.
Read
September 9, 2021Harry picked this off the shelf for me — kismet! I felt inspired by Strand's form and loved playing with it when we got back to my apartment to write. The short, surreal prose poetry works for me, both as a reader and a writer.
September 19, 2021
I read this quickly in bed, of a Sunday morning. I thought it was about death, but maybe that's just the mood I'm in.
Read
September 7, 2023❤️🩹
May 3, 2015
In working through Mark Stand's, "Almost Invisible" I found myself wanting to rename it, "The Bearable Heaviness of Nonbeing."
Thematically the poems make a powerful statement of a poet caught somewhere between night and day, between life and death, between consciousness and dreams.
From "The Enigma of the Infinitesimal"
"You've seen them at dusk, walking along the shore, seen them standing in doorways... Lovers of the in-between, they are neither here nor there, neither in nor out."
From "Ever So Many Hundred Years Hence"
"Down the milky corridors of fog... I see him, my long-lost uncle, great and golden in the sudden sunlight, who predicted that he would reach over the years and be with me and that I would be waiting."
Often though the poems reach a tone of absurdity.
From "Dream Testicles, Vanished Vaginas"
"I've heard that all vaginas are up there, even the most honest, and energetic, are shut down, and that all testicles, even the most forthright and gifted, swing dreamily among the clouds like little chandeliers."
The Strand I prefer is the one found in "Love Silhouetted by Lamplight."
"The arm of smoke, grown thin, reaches across the water and settles briefly on a small house near the woods. A husband and wife, each with a drink in hand, are sitting inside, arguing about which of them will die first."
Here the metaphor is alive--dreamy, poetic, yet grounded in reality.
Thematically the poems make a powerful statement of a poet caught somewhere between night and day, between life and death, between consciousness and dreams.
From "The Enigma of the Infinitesimal"
"You've seen them at dusk, walking along the shore, seen them standing in doorways... Lovers of the in-between, they are neither here nor there, neither in nor out."
From "Ever So Many Hundred Years Hence"
"Down the milky corridors of fog... I see him, my long-lost uncle, great and golden in the sudden sunlight, who predicted that he would reach over the years and be with me and that I would be waiting."
Often though the poems reach a tone of absurdity.
From "Dream Testicles, Vanished Vaginas"
"I've heard that all vaginas are up there, even the most honest, and energetic, are shut down, and that all testicles, even the most forthright and gifted, swing dreamily among the clouds like little chandeliers."
The Strand I prefer is the one found in "Love Silhouetted by Lamplight."
"The arm of smoke, grown thin, reaches across the water and settles briefly on a small house near the woods. A husband and wife, each with a drink in hand, are sitting inside, arguing about which of them will die first."
Here the metaphor is alive--dreamy, poetic, yet grounded in reality.
July 21, 2012
Almost Invisible consists almost entirely of paragraph-long prose poems—there's just one piece, the poem-within-a-poem of "Poem of the Spanish Poet," that deviates from that form at all. I like prose poems, generally, the way they sometimes could almost be called short-short stories, and I like these prose poems, the way that in bite-sized pieces they blend humor and nostalgia and uncertainty. I like the vagueness of some of these poems, like "Bury Your Face in Your Hands", with its images of wind and snow and haze, with its sense of being adrift. I like "Anywhere Could Be Somewhere" for its radical sense of uncertainty, which manages to be ominous and funny at once, in the voice of a speaker who doesn't know where he/she comes from. Throughout, Strand has a knack for striking images, striking lines, like: "The empty heart comes home from a busy day at the office" (15).
Probably my favorite poem in the book is "The Everyday Enchantment of Music", the cadence and pace of it, and how well it fits with the conceit/images of a thing becoming something becoming something else.
Probably my favorite poem in the book is "The Everyday Enchantment of Music", the cadence and pace of it, and how well it fits with the conceit/images of a thing becoming something becoming something else.
August 2, 2017
Mark Strand - per me il più grande dei poeti contemporanei - questa volta si presenta con una raccolta di brevi prose che ripercorrono con ispirazione e slancio immutati i temi classici della sua poetica, il tutto sottolineato da un stile apparentemente leggero, che la scelta di espressione stilistica rende quasi colloquiale. L'oggetto della sua osservazione è la realtà, ma solo in apparenza. Se entriamo nel mondo del poeta ci accorgiamo che le cose non sono esattamente quello che sembrano e che i loro confini si fanno sempre più indefiniti man mano che ci avviciniamo per osservarli meglio: “Non c'è modo di dissipare la foschia in cui viviamo. Nessuno ha la minima idea di dove siamo”, scrive Strand in Nasconditi la faccia tra le mani e in Ovunque potrebbe essere un posto qualsiasi aggiunge che “si dice che qualcosa stia accadendo sul confine, ma nessuno sa quale confine”. Tutto è messo in discussione, le persone non sono quello che dicono di essere come il banchiere nel bordello delle cieche, che forse è un pastore, mentre la puttana forse è una ricca vedova. O forse no. Sono frammenti di realtà fotografati attraverso l'obiettivo del poeta che spinge le situazioni al limite, per vedere come si comportano ai confini dell'assurdo, cosa succede sulla linea dell'orizzonte, nel punto dove il mondo reale e quello fantastico si incontrano. Ê una poesia degli interstizi, degli “spazi intermedi [che] non sono né qui né lì, né dentro né fuori, di quella terra di nessuno, quel luogo meraviglioso, da contemplare come solo un dio potrebbe, la congiunzione luminosa di niente e tutto” (L'enigma dell'infinitesimale). La vita è fatta di istanti, attimi, filtrati e ingigantiti dal nostro sé che li vive “come se fossero veri”, un quotidiano costruire sul nulla cattedrali di parole che servono solo per mascherare il vuoto delle nostre vite perché, proprio come Gli studiosi dell'ineffabile, marciamo nel mondo alla ricerca di noi stessi senza renderci conto che è la polvere che alziamo quella che ci impedisce di vedere. Quella di Strand è poesia dell'attesa. Attesa che il niente accada (Il desiderio del ministro della Cultura viene esaudito), attesa di un futuro presunto (L'antica epoca della nostalgia), attesa di un'ondata di sentimento che arrivi improvvisamente e porti via il poeta (Gli studiosi dell'ineffabile), attesa delle donne sedute in riva al mare ad aspettare qualcosa che non sarebbe mai arrivato (La malinconia sepolta del poeta) e attesa godotiana che succeda qualcosa che però, forse, è già successo (Per non perdere il Grande Evento). Ma quella di Strand è anche poesia della ricerca impossibile di un'identità definita, con i troppi sé passati, presenti e futuri che finiscono per confondersi scolorando uno nell'altro. Ê poesia dell'assurdo e dei paradossi, quasi fossimo in un'incisione di Escher dove la logica, la consequenzialità delle cose è solo apparente. Così capita di incontrare un cuore vuoto che rientrato a casa da una giornataccia in ufficio vorrebbe svuotarsi del vuoto (Spossatezza al tramonto), ma come si fa a svuotarsi del vuoto? Come può un cuore vuoto obbedire agli ordini della mente? O ci si può imbattere in un uomo che riceve una lettera dal padre morto quarant'anni prima (Il misterioso arrivo di una lettera inconsueta), o in un tizio intento a fissare un libro di pagine vuote (Come una foglia portata dal vento), e anche in una scimmia parlante (L'assistente sociale e la scimmia). La poesia di Strand è anche (soprattutto?) poesia dell'assenza: c'è sempre qualcosa che rimane in fieri, che non si esprime, che genera una sorta di malinconia per qualcosa che avrebbe potuto essere e non è stato (Sogno di viaggio), una Malinconia ermetica per le cose che non sono esattamente quelle che credevamo, ma solo una “possibilità” tra le tante. La conclusione è che noi tutti siamo su un treno che attraversa una pianura interminabile, “nessuna città ne aspetta l'arrivo, nessuna ne piange la partenza”, senza sapere da dove siamo partiti né dove stiamo andando. Andare, questo è il nostro scopo (Nessuno conosce ciò che si conosce) e Strand guarda a questo viaggio alternando stupore e disincanto, riflessione e divertimento. Quello che fa è un uso particolarmente arguto dell'ironia, utilizzandola come una specie di palloncino al quel si aggrappa quando arriva sul bordo del precipizio e che gli permette di superare l'ostacolo, anzi, di volare sopra il baratro guardandolo dall'alto con occhio leggero. _____ Non sono un esperto di poesia, non ho solide basi né particolari competenze letterarie, probabilmente delle poesie che leggo ne comprendo solo alcune ed anche quelle poche solo in minima parte... eppure amo incondizionatamente la poesia di Strand. Perché? mi sono chiesto. Credo che la risposta l'abbia data proprio lui, in una conferenza alla John Cabot University del 2010: Quando tu scopri che una poesia sta parlando a te ci torni in continuazione, anche se non la capisci interamente. Anzi, forse è meglio che tu non la capisca interamente, perché c'è un nucleo in lei che rimane misterioso per sempre e ti provoca ad entrare, e più lei attira te dentro di sé e più tu scopri delle cose dentro te stesso, perché ti metti a chiederti: “Perché lo sto facendo, che parte di me viene messa in moto e reagisce a questa poesia in particolare?”. Quando una persona va in un museo e osserva i quadri deve chiedersi: “Perché sto guardando proprio questo?” E la risposta è che c'è qualcosa in te che sta risuonando esattamente con quel dipinto ed è un obbligo per chi guarda un quadro, per chi legge una poesia, interrogarsi su questo. Io non so quale parte sia nell'uomo, ma una parte piccolissima, indicibile, forse un'invenzione della mente, forse una mia invenzione... ma non può essere del tutto mia, perché quando io mi esprimo in questa maniera c'è qualcuno che lo capisce.
November 28, 2016
Amazing prose poems, such as:
BURY YOUR FACE IN YOUR HANDS
Because we have crossed the river and the wind offers only a numb uncoiling of cold and we have meekly adapted, no longer expecting more than we have been given, nor wondering how it happened that we came to this place, we don't mind that nothing turned out as we thought it might. There is no way to clear the haze in which we live, no way to know that we have undergone another day. The silent snow of thought melts before it has a chance to stick. Where we are is unresolved. The gates to nowhere multiply and the present is so far away, so deeply far away.
BURY YOUR FACE IN YOUR HANDS
Because we have crossed the river and the wind offers only a numb uncoiling of cold and we have meekly adapted, no longer expecting more than we have been given, nor wondering how it happened that we came to this place, we don't mind that nothing turned out as we thought it might. There is no way to clear the haze in which we live, no way to know that we have undergone another day. The silent snow of thought melts before it has a chance to stick. Where we are is unresolved. The gates to nowhere multiply and the present is so far away, so deeply far away.
September 1, 2012
The form of these prose poems is similar to the stuff I've been writing lately. I wanted to give it five stars just for that but then I realized how sort of impossible it is to read or understand or make much of and I know I can do better than that. I can hide in prose poems (or flash fiction, if you prefer; not sure where the line falls) but there's more to it than that.
December 30, 2021
Whether it is called a prose poem, a short short story, or micro fiction, Mark Strand is its master. I began by marking the works I liked with “post it tabs”, but noticed I was marking every other page, so I stopped. But be sure to read “The Emergency Room at Dusk”, “Once Upon a Cold November Morning”, “Provisional Eternity”, and “The Street at the End of the World”.
November 23, 2012
All of these poems seemed to be about aging, the passage of time, the disappearance of man and memory. A few will haunt me ("The Emergency Room at Dusk", "Exhaustion at Sunset"), but most will vanish the moment I return this slim volume to the library.
November 3, 2012
Confusing and charming all at once.
December 8, 2024
Anywhere Could Be Somewhere
I might have come from the high country, or maybe the low country, I don’t recall which. I might have come from the city, but what city in what country is beyond me. I might have come from the outskirts of a city from which others have come or maybe a city
from which only I have come. Who’s to know? Who’s to decide if it rained or the sun was out? Who’s to remember? They say things are happening at the border, but nobody knows which border. They talk of a hotel there, where it doesn’t matter if you forgot
your suitcase, another will be waiting, big enough, and just for you.
Harmony in the Boudoir
After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more behind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her. “So you see,” he says, kicking off his slippers, “I am more than what I have led you to
believe I am.” “Oh, you silly man,” says his wife, “of course you are. I fund that just thinking of you having so many selves receding into nothingness is very exciting. That you barely exist as you are couldn’t please me more.”
Provisional Eternity
A man and a woman lay in bed. “Just one more time,” said the man, “just one more time.” “Why do you keep saying that?” said the woman. “Because I never want it to end,” said the man. “What don’t you want to end?” said the woman. “This,” said the man,
“this never wanting it to end.”
Trouble in Pocatello
It was autumn. It was late in the day. A storm was coming. Flocks of birds were flying south. A pink-and-purple sunset stained the house, the wind gusted, branched tossed, leaves dropped like dead moths on a sesal rug. “I’m home,” said the husband. “Not again,” said the wife.
Like a Leaf Carried Off by the Wind
After leaving work, where he is not known and where his job is a mystery even to himself, he walks down dimly lit streets and dark alleys to his room at the other end of town in the rear of a rundown apartment house. It is winter and he walks hunched over with the collar of his coat turned up. When he gets to his room, he sits at a small table and looks at the book open before him. Its pages are blank, which is why he is able to gaze at them for hours.
I might have come from the high country, or maybe the low country, I don’t recall which. I might have come from the city, but what city in what country is beyond me. I might have come from the outskirts of a city from which others have come or maybe a city
from which only I have come. Who’s to know? Who’s to decide if it rained or the sun was out? Who’s to remember? They say things are happening at the border, but nobody knows which border. They talk of a hotel there, where it doesn’t matter if you forgot
your suitcase, another will be waiting, big enough, and just for you.
Harmony in the Boudoir
After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more behind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her. “So you see,” he says, kicking off his slippers, “I am more than what I have led you to
believe I am.” “Oh, you silly man,” says his wife, “of course you are. I fund that just thinking of you having so many selves receding into nothingness is very exciting. That you barely exist as you are couldn’t please me more.”
Provisional Eternity
A man and a woman lay in bed. “Just one more time,” said the man, “just one more time.” “Why do you keep saying that?” said the woman. “Because I never want it to end,” said the man. “What don’t you want to end?” said the woman. “This,” said the man,
“this never wanting it to end.”
Trouble in Pocatello
It was autumn. It was late in the day. A storm was coming. Flocks of birds were flying south. A pink-and-purple sunset stained the house, the wind gusted, branched tossed, leaves dropped like dead moths on a sesal rug. “I’m home,” said the husband. “Not again,” said the wife.
Like a Leaf Carried Off by the Wind
After leaving work, where he is not known and where his job is a mystery even to himself, he walks down dimly lit streets and dark alleys to his room at the other end of town in the rear of a rundown apartment house. It is winter and he walks hunched over with the collar of his coat turned up. When he gets to his room, he sits at a small table and looks at the book open before him. Its pages are blank, which is why he is able to gaze at them for hours.
September 13, 2023
It's not the thing to argue with a poet, but this collection did not feel like poetry to me. Each page had a single paragraph, with highly grammatical sentences, which felt more like artistic prose than poetry. Here is an example:
The Social Worker and the Monkey
Once I sat in a room with a monkey who told me he was not a monkey. I understood his anguish being trapped in a body he detested. "Sir," I said, "I think I know what you are feeling, and I would like to help you." "Treat me like a monkey," he said. "It serves me right."
This just doesn't strike me as poetic. Interesting, well-worded, imaginative--absolutely. But it just doesn't feel like poetry. I like Mark Strand and I know he's won a Pulitzer, but for me, this collection just didn't sing like poetry usually does for me.
The Social Worker and the Monkey
Once I sat in a room with a monkey who told me he was not a monkey. I understood his anguish being trapped in a body he detested. "Sir," I said, "I think I know what you are feeling, and I would like to help you." "Treat me like a monkey," he said. "It serves me right."
This just doesn't strike me as poetic. Interesting, well-worded, imaginative--absolutely. But it just doesn't feel like poetry. I like Mark Strand and I know he's won a Pulitzer, but for me, this collection just didn't sing like poetry usually does for me.
March 7, 2022
Wow, a Poet Laureate wrote that first poem "A banker in the brothel of blind women". What is this terrible poetry? This is probably the worst I've read. It's misogynistic, offensive, and I expect better writing from a poet laureate, but maybe he was a poet accoladed in 1990 when he was named and honored. But his poetry did not age well with the times. It's beyond me why anyone would have found this good at any point in time. But here we are, Strand has had multiple books published and is recognized. Why? Why????
November 24, 2021
Time passed quickly and the whole collection felt like a single drone. Rhythm is consistent with only few formal surprises, it's not that sort of a book. It mostly leaves you with a 'generic nostalgic feeling' that isn't always relatable and rarely goes any place, which you forgive him for because the best moments are just so enchanting. I read this over a couple of days in quarantine, but I would actually recommend basking in the glow of this book in a single-sitting.
July 5, 2023
Lovers of the in-between, they are neither here nor there, neither in nor out. Poor souls, they are driven to experience the impossible. Even at night, they lie in bed with one eye closed and the other open, hoping to catch the last second of consciousness and the first of sleep, to inhabit that no-man’s-land, that beautiful place, to behold as only a god might, the luminous conjunction of nothing and all.
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