Blizzard of One

by Mark Strand

Strand's poems occupy a place that exists between abstraction and the sensuous particulars of experience. It is a place created by a voice that moves with unerring ease between the commonplace and the sublime. The poems are filled with "the weather of leavetaking," but they are also unexpectedly funny. The erasure of self and the depredations of time are seen as sources of sorrow, but also as grounds for celebration. This is one of the difficult truths these poems dramatize with stoicism and wit. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Blizzard of One is an extraordinary book--the summation of the work of a lifetime by one of our very few true masters of the art of poetry.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, The United States Of America

55 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Mark 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.

Reviews

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Old Man Leaves Party

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.
I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

The poem above was published in this collection in 1998. Mark Strand would've been around 64 at the time. Sadly, he passed away a few weeks ago. He was just over eighty.

"How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body."

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

And our shadows floated away beneath us towards sunset and darkened the backs of birds, and blackened the sea whose breath smelled slightly of fish, of almonds, and of rotting fruit. A blizzard of coastal aromas had come to collect our attention, and we drifted through all it tried to impart, not knowing where we were going. And soon the air was soiled with dust and iris-colored clouds. [...] And the rush of water was suddenly loud as if a flood were loosed upon the ballroom floor. I seemed to be dancing alone into the absence of all that I knew and was bound by, the sight of the sea coming close, the spread of solvency, the smear, the blurred erasure of differences, the end of self, the end of whatever surrounds the self. All that I saw was a vast celebration of transparence, a clear dream of nothing. And I kept on going. The breakers flashed and fell under the moon's vacant gaze; scattered petals of foam shone briefly, then sank in the sand. It was cold, and I found myself suddenly back with the others. The sea, that vast ungraspable body, that huge and meaningless empire of water, was left on its own. [...] I cannot remember, but I think you were there, whoever you were.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm guessing Strand won the Pulitzer more for the work he did BEFORE this book, rather than for this book itself. Not that the book was bad, I just don't think it was deserving of the Pulitzer.

The man is obviously brilliant. I particularly liked "Next Time," and the last of his "A Suite of Appearances." ("Will the same day ever come back, and with it Our amazement at having been in it, or will only a dark haze Spread at the back of the mind, erasing events, one after The other, so brief they may have been lost to begin with?")

The real meat of the book came at the end though, with "The Delirium Waltz." The mix of his styles give it a unique touch, and the symbolism and imagery of the dance itself gives the feeling that when I read it, I was looking at the picture of the old/young woman, and I saw them both.

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

I settled on 4 stars because I would give some of the poems 5 and others 3 or maybe 2. The section which opened the collection was amazing but I felt the works got steadily lower in quality as the book progressed.

But it, y'know, won a Pulitzer, so whadda I know?

Here's the poem from which the title comes:

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That’s all
There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
“It’s time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.”

[shelby · Rating 5 out of 5]

grappling with the infinite and unknowable hiding in small experiences

[Monte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some Last Words
1
It is easier for a needle to pass through a camel
Than for a poor man to enter a woman of means.
Just go to the graveyard and ask around.
2
Eventually, you slip outside, letting the door
Bang shut on your latest thought. What was it anyway?
Just go to the graveyard and ask around.
3
"Negligence" is the perfume I love.
O Fedora. Fedora. If you want any,
Just go to the graveyard and ask around.
4
The bones of the buffalo, the rabbit at sunset,
The wind and its double, the tree, the town...
Just go to the graveyard and ask around.
5
If you think good things are on their way
And the world will improve, don't hold your breath.
Just go to the graveyard and ask around.
6
You over, why do you ask if this is the valley
Of limitless blue, and if we are its prisoners?
Just go to the graveyard and ask around.
7
Life is a dream that is never recalled when the sleeper awakes.
If this is beyond you, Magnificent One,
Just go to the graveyard and ask around.

[Jeremy Allan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not the Mark Strand that I wanted to read. There are moments of beauty, of unique vision, of the well-wrought line and the inspired attention. There are fine fine poems. But this is not a book like Reasons for Moving or Darker, where every word seems placed with purpose and at the expense of a thousand lines that had been erased. Where there are meditations, they are meandering, to my mind. This book is loose.

Which is not to say that Blizzard of One contains bad poems, flabby poems, or excess of another kind. Strand is still a master when he reaches this volume, just not in mastery of what I came looking for. For that, I need to go back to the beginnings.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

He was magnificent. I mourn the fact that there will be no more new Mark Strand books.

[Billy O'Callaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unusual collection. It's quite short, with only twenty poems, a few of which seem to add little to the cause. They are interesting enough (there's a 'row, row, row your boat' quality to 'The Delirium Waltz' that made me smile), and some of the lines really do gleam, so I wouldn't want to go so far as to call them 'filler', but for me they do hang a bit heavy. And yet, this is definitely a collection worth reading, because the good poems here are really very good indeed, and the best of them are quite remarkable.
Reading these poems, you generally sense Strand's thoughts rather than fully grasping them. You feel yourself drawn to an edge of understanding. The best lines consider time and loss with a kind of existential acceptance. Beyond hope, even beyond understanding, there can be meaning in nothingness.

“Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems,
And what is invisible stays that way. Desire has fled,
Leaving only a trace of perfume in its wake,
And so many people we loved have gone,”
- ('The Next Time')

“It could be said, even here, that what remains of the self
Unwinds into a vanishing light, and thins like dust, and heads
to a place where knowing and nothing pass into each other, and through;”
- ('In Memory of Joseph Brodsky')

The collection's title is drawn from a line in the collection's most masterful poem. 'A Piece of the Storm' really is some piece of work, a kind of awakening to the realisation of an end, and what that means. But it's not one to be analysed, only read and savoured (others have quoted it in full in their reviews, so I'll not bother).
The lesser poems hold this collection back, but I'm not sure they really matter too much. Taken as a whole, this is really probably three-star stuff, but there's enough gold among the good, and enough of a sense of permanence about the title poem (which I'll be returning to again and again, and sharing whenever I possibly can with anyone who'll listen), for me to grant it a four.

[Ellice · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite poetry books of all time, which I reread on the day Mark Strand died, November 29, 2014. It completely held up on rereading. It was interesting to go through the poems with Strand's loss on my mind, as permanence and impermanence were major themes in his work. One example is "A Piece of the Storm," from which the title of the book comes: one stray snowflake becomes a tiny blizzard, which is gone as fast as it began. I was also particularly struck this time around by the end of "The Great Poet Returns":

Tell me, you people out there, what is poetry anyway?
Can anyone die without even a little?

Gratefully, thanks to Mark Strand, we don't have to.

[Jenn Mattson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t understand all of Mark Strand’s poetry, but I love the way he uses language (maybe if I just continue to let it wash over me?). I was fortunate enough to see him read his poetry before he died and, as I tell my students, along with his poems being amazing, he’s one of the handsomest men I’ve ever seen (and he was in his late 70s.). And he was an exquisite visual artist as well. How is this fair? My two favorites of this collection are also two of my favorite poems: “Here” and “In Memory of Joseph Brodsky” (whose works I read in college but have no recollection of).

[Kasandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as strong as Reasons for Moving, my favorite of his, but still excellent. The poems here range from what I'd give 3 stars to, to 5, so it was hard to rate this, but I love the way he deals with aging, loss, and loneliness (even while surrounded by others) with wry humor, metaphysics, and fantastic imagery. Also love his frequent use of questions to end poems, easier said than done. Favorites: "The Night, The Porch", IV and VI in "A Suite of Appearances", all of "Five Dogs".

[Lisa Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Although I love the past, the dark of it, The weight of it teaching us nothing, I will love the twenty-first century more, for in it I see someone in bathrobe and slippers, brown-eyed and poor, Walking through the snow without leaving so much as a footprint behind.”

These are beautiful poems, simple and filled with intimacy and truth.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tend to agree with another reviewer, that the Pulitzer was awarded for his body of work, if not for his role as Poet Laureate, rather than for this specific collection. But I do like, from “What it Was”, “....It was the wind that tore At the trees; it was the fuss and clutter of clouds, the shore Littered with stars....” And the different “styles” in “The Delirium Waltz” deserve attention.

[Xavior · Rating 2 out of 5]

BLIZZARD OF ONE- This was one of the books I did not enjoy only because It is really deep when it came to poetry and because it did not rhyme at all, and how the sentences were long. People who are deep with poetry would love to read this book.

[s · Rating 4 out of 5]

in Mark Strands' words:

I looked at Jane, whose brow was suddenly furrowed with concern. "Surely, Professor, the role of poetry is not just about helping us to remember what we felt at a particular time. This may happen to a poet as he's writing a poem, but certainly I don't read poems that way."

Jane was right. What I had told her and Dick was a fiction. I had invented inadequacy on the public's part and limitation on the poet's part. I knew very well that what I consider "doing justice" in characterizing an event or our feeling about it is in itself an act of betrayal, that feelings communicated by language are in fact made up to resemble what we imagine our feelings to have been, or ought to have been. Every poet knows that there has to be something in his writing that embodies feeling, something that goes beyond merely referring to it. The poem must make the reader or listener believe that he is inside an emotional moment, however protracted. The event that would be recalled takes on a secondary role as if it were merely what called forth the poem, simply the occasion for the release of feelings that had always dwelled in us.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The amazing feature about Strand's poetry, I feel, is his ability to link the metaphysical and erudite with commonplace and the basic. Reading his lines is a heady walk throughh the garden of philosophy. My favorite was "What It Was." I will read more Strand.

[Giselle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If you think good things are on their way
And the world will improve, don't hold your breath.
Just go to the graveyard and ask around."
And happy holidays to you!
I love closing my year with a good poetry book.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly my favorite little book of poetry ever.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first interaction with Mark Strand, and it was full of memorable poems. I don't really know how to write about poetry yet — perhaps never will — so I'm content to just share some of the lines and poems that stood out.

My favorite was The Night, The Porch:

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter. Even now we seem to be waiting for something
Whose appearance would be its vanishing--the sound, say,
Of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf, or less.
There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells as much, and was never written with us in mind.

I also quite liked these lines from The Next Time:

Nobody sees it happening, but the architecture of our time / Is becoming the architecture of the next time.

The Suite of Appearances works through that frustrating paradox at the heart of happiness that the best kind, the only salvageable type of happiness, is that which is oh so fleeting. Better yet to pay attention to the material world around you, pause for the "spectral glimpse" of beauty, and wish for its hasty departure. As Strand writes in the sixth part of the poem:

There is a limit to what we can picture
And to how much of a good thing is a good thing. Better to hope

For the merest reminder, a spectral glimpse—there but not here,
Something not quite a scene, posed only to be dissolved,
So, when it goes as it must, no sense of loss springs in its wake.

- - -

I also love the closing lines of the poem, remarking on the irreducible singularity and specialness of each day, and how our mind works almost immediately to start redacting the parts of it that don't anchor to some narrative we have of our life:

Will the same day ever come back, and
with it

Our amazement at having been in it, or will only a dark haze
Spread at the back of the mind, erasing events, one after
The other, so brief they may have been lost to begin with?

[Scott Holstad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't even know how this guy got to be Poet Laureate, let alone win the Pulitzer! But then, I've rarely agreed with any of the PL choices, yet I don't think that reflects poorly on me. I think it reflects poorly on the academy and their closed door good ole boys/girls club to which they grant few for admittance, and to few they speak. I'll take populists who speak to ME and millions of others around the world any day, such as Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Locklin, and of course, Bukowski. Now, THESE are the giants of American poetry, and the only person within the "academy" (and only grudgingly) who gets this and these writers is Billy Collins, which says more about him than it does the boring morons who typically inhabit that post. Collins, at least, wanted to realistically get poetry that matters to the masses and tried to do so. The others talk a good talk and then keep preaching to the privileged few, the only ones who give a shit about these "craftsmen/women." A Brit I can think of offhand who seems like good company for these folks is Ted Hughes, who rode the fame of his late wife to a similar position in his home country while never accomplishing a fraction of worth with his poetry that Plath did in her few short books... If you dig academic clap trap poetry, recommended. If you're NOT an elitist and live in a city and work a real job and read, yes the masters, but also a bit of everything else, well, I'd avoid most people like Strand, Donald Hall, etc., etc. Pure, dull boredom. But, oh the craft, right? ;)

[Nasar · Rating 4 out of 5]

WHAT IT WAS

I
It was impossible to imagine, impossible
Not to imagine; the blueness of it, the shadow it cast,
Falling downward, filling the dark with the chill of itself,
The cold of it falling out of itself, out of whatever idea
Of itself it described as it fell; a something, a smallness,
A dot, a speck, a speck within a speck, an endless depth
Of smallness; a song, but less than a song, something drowning
Into itself, something going, a flood of sound, but less
Than a sound; the last of it, the blank of it,
The tender small blank of it filling its echo, and falling,
And rising unnoticed, and falling again, and always thus,
And always because, and only because, once having been, it was . . .
II
It was the beginning of a chair;
It was the gray couch; it was the walls,
The garden, the gravel road; it was the way
The ruined moonlight fell across her hair.
It was that, and it was more. It was the wind that tore
At the trees; it was the fuss and clutter of clouds, the shore
Littered with stars. It was the hour which seemed to say
That if you knew what time it really was, you would not
Ask for anything again. It was that. It was certainly that.
It was also what never happened—a moment so full
That when it went, as it had to, no grief was large enough
To contain it. It was the room that appeared unchanged
After so many years. It was that. It was the hat
She’d forgotten to take, the pen she left on the table.
It was the sun on my hand. It was the sun’s heat. It was the way
I sat, the way I waited for hours, for days. It was that. Just that.

[AE Hines · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Blizzard of One (Knoff, 1998), winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, served as my introduction to the work of the late poet Mark Strand. At the book's release, The New York Times reviewer said, “[Strand's] apparently simple lines have an eerie, seductive ring of the inevitable.” I would add, however, they also have the ring of the ineffable. In this collection, Strand employs often deceptively simple language, but walks up to, over and over, the edge of that which can’t be spoken of. What one can’t quite put into words. While many of the poems give the reader a concise and concrete place in the real world to stand before trailing off into the unnamable, others are more abstract from the start, leaving the reader feeling as though they are walking through a languid, fleetingly beautiful dreamscape. “And you think that you are perhaps not who you thought,” Strand says in “A Suite of Appearances,” adding that “henceforth, / Any idea of yourself must include a body surrounding a song.” Later, in the poem “In Memory of Joseph Brodsky,” Strand tells us, “What remains of the self unwinds and unwinds, for none / Of the boundaries hold…” Lines like these stick with you long after this book has been closed, and one imagines quoting them to others, and returning to the entire collection many times in the future.

[Shin · Rating 4 out of 5]

the way i see it, these poems are attempts at time travel and astral projection.

in the movie #EverythingEverywhereAllAtOnce you make small, beyond-the-norm actions which will be your jumping pads to access an alternate universe self, in #BlizzardOfOne, picturesque vistas and quiet objects bring about a push by which the soul leaves the body and turns into a shapeless form traversing abstract worlds and in-betweens. a ship sailing afar, beach water, a dog sitting by dead leaves, by the end of a poem these might take you to the land of the dead or the transitory spaces between present to past.

in brief quests visiting immaterial worlds, #MarkStrand is not afraid to leave his physical form behind.

reading the book once is clearly not enough. when i finished its 55 pages i immediately went back to the beginning to reexperience each one.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Night, The Porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing--
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.
--Mark Strand

A few liminal poems, well worth reading.

[Shay Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first third of this collection only interested me to a degree. It did show me that, unlike so many contemporary poets, Strand knew how to write a prose poem, and possessed his own unique voice with a slight but definite whiff of Russell Edson in his imagery. But when I got to the middle and final sections, that's when his pen (keyboard?) caught fire and I really began to savor his words. As a lover of form, I particularly liked "2 de Chiricos", and of course the final "Delirium Waltz" is magnificent. This was my first Mark Strand collection and I look forward to reading the other book of his that I have, "Mr. & Mrs. Baby."

[Susan Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you only have one Mark Strand book to read, you won't go wrong with Blizzard of One, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Strand, born in Summerside, PEI but raised in the US, was Poet Laureate consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. He died in 2014. These poems, mostly sonnets, are masterful, each one a story told in verse. The final cycle of poems in the book is entitled "Delirium Waltz." They could be a musical round, with a set rhythm, like a waltz. Here are the opening lines of the last poem in the cycle: "Would never sit down together / The season of dancing was endless / And many who wished they could / Would never be able to stop".

[Dave Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the conversational voice of this set of poems. They seemed "placeless" and "stateless."

I finished this book in 3 days. I don't like to do that. It feels like binge-watching a TV show where you really don't have time between episodes to fully absorb what you just saw.

But in this case I was so delighted by each poem I wanted to move on to the next. I didn't try to rush through this book but I seemed to be carried through it.

I may go back and re-read this one at some point.

[Iggy · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you like meandering existential poems that tell a lot and show very little, you'll love this book! Abstract and conceptual to the point of being so non-specific that they're conveniently universal; when a specific detail comes along it hardly matters because it's floating in a void of abstraction that prevents the reader from grasping any context from which to derive meaning. I'm sure the Pulitzer is for Strand, not this book.

[Heather Neidlinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection was …. Okay?

I like Strand’s voice and tone throughout, and there’s some interesting stuff going on structurally, but the sentiments just didn’t resonate with me. I enjoyed “Five Dogs” and The Delirium Waltz” - they shocked me with their presentation and held my attention. The rest, though, didn’t do much for me.

Side note - I know he’s a Pulitzer winner and a former Poet Laureate, so clearly I’m going against the grain here.