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Selected Poems of Mark Strand
In this compilation of older and newer poems, Strand demonstrates his mastery of cadence and narrative style.
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
22 people are currently reading
1343 people want to read
About the author
Mark Strand
179 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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Currently reading
January 6, 2020I have never been the one to rate the books objectively. I don't understand how objectivity works when it comes to rating poems.
So, the other day I got this book from a Used Book Store ( for 2 dollars . I dug Strand out from a pile of other books which he was buried under ).
Found a couple of my favorite poems within its pages. And here are 5 stars even before the book is read completely.
Because poems can carry the burden of expectations as well surprise you when you least expected them to.
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Damn it!!
Eating Poetry
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
Fuck me!!
:)
So, the other day I got this book from a Used Book Store ( for 2 dollars . I dug Strand out from a pile of other books which he was buried under ).
Found a couple of my favorite poems within its pages. And here are 5 stars even before the book is read completely.
Because poems can carry the burden of expectations as well surprise you when you least expected them to.
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Damn it!!
Eating Poetry
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
Fuck me!!
:)
December 3, 2023
Twenty years ago, something like that, my father gifted me this book and I lent it to a friend. A month ago I thought of one of Mark Stand's poems in this book, couldn't get it out of my head, and ordered another copy. Sometimes re-reading the work of a writer we loved in the past feels like coming home, with a new pair of glasses. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
July 8, 2023
في حقل
أنا الحقل الغائب.
هكذا الحال دوماً،
حيثما أكونُ
أكونُ
ما ليس في مكانه.
أنا الحقل الغائب.
هكذا الحال دوماً،
حيثما أكونُ
أكونُ
ما ليس في مكانه.
May 20, 2008
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
(I also really liked "For Jessica, My Daughter")
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
(I also really liked "For Jessica, My Daughter")
June 28, 2007
I don't remember if the following two poems are contained in this 1980 collection of poems by Strand but they should suffice as evidence of why this volume, any volume of Strand's poetry, is worth your time.
"Keeping Things Whole"
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
"Coming To This"
We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.
And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.
Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart or saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain.
"Keeping Things Whole"
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
"Coming To This"
We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.
And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.
Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart or saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain.
January 6, 2014
Here are some examples of his poetry:
The End
By Mark Strand
Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
When the Vacation Is Over for Good
by Mark Strand
It will be strange
Knowing at last it couldn’t go on forever,
The certain voice telling us over and over
That nothing would change,
And remembering too,
Because by then it will all be done with, the way
Things were, and how we had wasted time as though
There was nothing to do,
When, in a flash
The weather turned, and the lofty air became
Unbearably heavy, the wind strikingly dumb
And our cities like ash,
And knowing also,
What we never suspected, that it was something like summer
At its most august except that the nights were warmer
And the clouds seemed to glow,
And even then,
Because we will not have changed much, wondering what
Will become of things, and who will be left to do it
All over again,
And somehow trying,
But still unable, to know just what it was
That went so completely wrong, or why it is
We are dying.
The End
By Mark Strand
Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
When the Vacation Is Over for Good
by Mark Strand
It will be strange
Knowing at last it couldn’t go on forever,
The certain voice telling us over and over
That nothing would change,
And remembering too,
Because by then it will all be done with, the way
Things were, and how we had wasted time as though
There was nothing to do,
When, in a flash
The weather turned, and the lofty air became
Unbearably heavy, the wind strikingly dumb
And our cities like ash,
And knowing also,
What we never suspected, that it was something like summer
At its most august except that the nights were warmer
And the clouds seemed to glow,
And even then,
Because we will not have changed much, wondering what
Will become of things, and who will be left to do it
All over again,
And somehow trying,
But still unable, to know just what it was
That went so completely wrong, or why it is
We are dying.
Want to read
February 15, 2021Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
From: Eating Poetry by Mark Strand
Feb 15, 21
*Friend's quote.
June 28, 2019
"Lines For Winter" helped get through some tough times; I found it online someplace. Later, I found this collection (which includes "Lines for Winter") in one of my favorite used book stores. For lack of a better word, some of Strand's poetry is surreal - see "The Way it Is." I often wondered, as I read each poem, what Strand's intent was; in other words, was I thinking a certain poem was about one thing, and Strand's intent was some completely different meaning? And does that even matter when reading a poem? I'm not sure, but I am sure that I enjoyed reading this collection. I found several of them poems deeply moving and satisfying, and full of hope (in a dark time, in the world, and for me personally, when hope is desperately needed).
Added a few minutes later: Oh yeah, I have to add, that "Eating Poetry" has a librarian in it, albeit an old school one. Mark Strand, if you were alive today, you'd know that the modern librarian not only would encourage eating poetry, he's probably eating poetry himself!
Added a few minutes later: Oh yeah, I have to add, that "Eating Poetry" has a librarian in it, albeit an old school one. Mark Strand, if you were alive today, you'd know that the modern librarian not only would encourage eating poetry, he's probably eating poetry himself!
January 19, 2015
Every couple of years I go back and read Strand. I open the book at random and read a poem once, twice, sometime three times and then put down the book. A day or so passes, I pick up the book again. Simple words, simple images that strike each other like pieces of flint and a spark becomes a flame and sometimes you understand both what it is to be warmed by fire and set afire.
April 21, 2010
Includes some of my favorites, published the year he was selected as the Poet Laureate, now 20 years ago!
I loved Eating Poetry with the foot-stamping librarian, The Room, Lines for Winter, and of course - The Remains and Coming to This, two of my favorites.
I loved Eating Poetry with the foot-stamping librarian, The Room, Lines for Winter, and of course - The Remains and Coming to This, two of my favorites.
September 20, 2018
سحر الموسيقى اليومي
لُمّعَ الصوت الخشن حتى صار صوتاً ناعماً، والذي لُمّعَ بدوره حتى أصبح موسيقى. ثم لمّعت الموسيقى حتى أصبحت ذاكرة ليلةٍ في البندقية عندما سقطت دموع البحر من جسر التنهدات، والتي لُمّعتْ أيضا حتى انتهى وجودها وفي مكانها وقف بيت خالٍ لقلبٍ كَدِر. ثم فجأة كانت هناك شمس وعادت الموسيقى وتحرك المرور وهناك في البعد، على حافة المدينة، ظهر خط طويل من الغيوم، وكان هناك رعد، والذي بالرغم من تهديده أصبح موسيقى، وذاكرة الذي حدث بعد البندقية كانت ستبدأ، وما حدث بعد أن انكسر بيت القلب الكدر لنصفين، كان سيبدأ هو الآخر.
إبقاءُ الأشياء كاملةً
في الحقل
أنا غياب الحقل.
هذه
هي الحال دائما.
أينما أكون
أكون أنا ما هو ناقص.
عندما أمشي
أشق الهواء
ودائما
يلتحم الهواء
ليملأ الفراغ
حيث كان جسدي
لدينا كلنا أسباب
للحركة
أنا أتحرك
لأبقي الأشياء كاملة
رجل و جمل
عشية عيد ميلادي الأربعين
جلست في الشرفة لأدخن
عندما مر بي رجل وجمل من العدم.
لم ينطق أيهما بصوت في البداية،
ولكن بينما ينجرفان بطول الشارع
خارجين عن البلدة، بدأ كلاهما في الغناء.
ولكن ما كانا يغنيانه ظل لغزا بالنسبة لي
الكلمات كانت غير واضحة، والنغمة
مزخرفة جدا ليمكنك أن تتذكرها. في الصحراء
دخلا وبينما يمضيان، علا صوتاهما
كصوت واحد فوق صوت الغربلة الذي
للرمال التي تعصف بها الرياح. روعة غنائهما،
خليطه المرواغ من إنسان و جمل، بدا
كصورة مثالية لكل الأزواج النادرين.
هل كانت تلك الليلة التي انتظرتها طويلا؟
أردتُ أن أصدق أنها كذلك،
لكن بالضبط عندما كانا يختفيان، توقف الرجل
والجمل عن الغناء، وركضا عائدين إلى البلدة.
وقفا أمام شرفتي، وحدقا إلى الأعلى إلي بعيونٍ غاضبة
وقالا:
“لقد أفسدته. لقد أفسدته للأبد”
الوصول الغامض لرسالة استثنائية
لقد كان يوما طويلا في المكتب وكانت رحلة طويلة عائدا إلى الشقة الصغيرة التي أعيش فيها. عندما وصلت إلى هناك فتحت النور ورأيت مظروفا على الطاولة وعليه اسمي. أين كانت الساعة؟ أين كان التقويم؟ كان خط أبي، ولكنه كان ميتا منذ أربعين سنة. وكما قد يفعل المرء، بدأت بالتفكير أنه ربما، ربما فقط ، كان حيا، ويعيش حياة سرية في مكان ما بالقرب من هنا. كيف إذن يمكنني أن أفسر المظروف؟ لأهدئ نفسي، جلست، وفتحته، وسحبت الخطاب. “إبني العزيز،” كانت تلك الطريقة التي بدأ بها. “إبني العزيز” ثم لا شيء.
سطور الشتاء
قل لنفسك
بينما يبرد الطقس ويسقط الرمادي من الهواء
أنك ستمضي قدما
ماشيا، سامعا
النغمة نفسها حيثما وجدت نفسك
داخل قبة الظلام
أو تحت الأبيض المتشقق
لنظرة القمر في وادي الثلج.
الليلة وبينما يبرد الطقس
قل لنفسك
ما تعرفه والذي هو لا شيء
إلا النغمة التي تعزفها عظامك
بينما تمضي. وستكون قادرا
لمرةٍ أن تستلقي تحت نار نجوم الشتاء الصغيرة.
وإذا حدث أنك لا تستطيع
أن تمضي قدما أو تعود
ووجدت نفسك
حيثما ستكون في النهاية،
قل لنفسك
في المرور الأخير للبرد عبر أطرافك
أنك تحب ما أنت عليه.
الفكرة
لنا، أيضا، كانت هناك أمنية أن نمتلك
شيئا وراء العالم الذي نعرفه، وراء أنفسنا،
وراء قدرتنا على التخيل، شيء رغم ذلك
نستطيع أن نرى فيه أنفسنا؛ وهذه الرغبة
أتت دائما عابرةً، في الضوء الشاحب، وفي برودة شديدة
لدرجة أن الثلج في بحيرات الوادي تشقق والتفت حوافه،
والجليد العاصف غطى كل الأرض التي رأيناها،
ومشاهد الماضي، عندما طفت ثانيةً على السطح،
لم تبدُ كما كانت عليه، إنما كانت شبحية وبيضاء
بين انحناءات زائفة وامّحاءات مخفية
ولم نشعر أبدا ولو لمرةٍ أننا اقتربنا
حتى الليلة التي قالت فيها الريح، ” لماذا تفعلوا هذا،
الآن بالذات؟ عودوا إلى المكان الذي تنتمون إليه؛”
وهناك ظهر، بنوافذه الوهّاجة، صغيرا،
في البُعد، في المدى المتجمد، كوخ؛
وقفنا أمامه، مندهشين من وجوده هناك،
وكنا لتقدمنا إلى الأمام وفتحنا الباب،
وخطونا إلى داخل الوهج ودفّأنا أنفسنا هناك،
لولا أنه كان لنا بكونه ليس لنا،
ويجب أن يظل خاليا. كانت تلك هي الفكرة.
النهاية
لا يعرف كل رجل ما سيغنيه في النهاية،
مشاهداً المرفأ بينما تبحرُ السفينةُ بعيداً، أو ما الذي سيبدو عليه الأمر
عندما يمسكه زئير البحر، ساكنًا، هناك في النهاية،
أو ما الذي سوف يتمناه عندما يكون واضحا أنه لن يعود أبدًا.
عندما يكون الوقت متأخرًا على تشذيب وردة أو التربيت على قطة،
عندما لا تظهر ثانيةً الشمس وهي تشعل العشب، ولا القمر وهو يُثْلِجُه ثانية.
لا يعرف كل رجل ما الذي سيكتشفه بدلا عن هذا.
عندما يميل ثقل الماضي على اللاشيء،
وتصير السماء ليست أكثر من ضوءٍ مُتَذَكّر، وحكايات السحاب المرتفع
والسحاب المنخفض تأتي لنهاية، وكل الطيور تَعلَقُ في الطيران،
لا يعرف كل رجل ما الذي ينتظره، أو ما الذي سيغنيه
عندما تنزلق سفينته في الظلام، هناك في النهاية
الغموض والعزلة في توبيكا*
العصرُ يغمَقُّ تدريجيا ليصير مساءا. يسقط رجلٌ أعمقَ فأعمقَ في حلزون النوم البطيء، في انجرافته، في طوله، خلال ما يبدو كضباب، ويصل أخيرا إلى باب مفتوح يعبر خلاله من غير أن يعرف السبب، ثم مرةً أخرى ومن غير أن يعرف السبب يذهب إلى غرفة حيث يجلس و ينتظر بينما تبدو الغرفة وكأنها تضيق عليه والظلمة أحلك من أي ظلمة عرفها، ويشعر بشيء يتشكل داخله من دون أن يكون متأكدا مما هو، تنمو سيطرة الشيء عليه، وكأن حكايةً على وشك أن تنفض، فيها شخصيتان، المتعة، والألم، ترتكبان نفس الجريمة، الجريمة التي هي له، التي سيعترف بها مرةً تلو مرةٍ، إلى أن لا تعني شيئا.
(*) توبيكا هي عاصمة ولاية كنساس الأمريكية.
اللاجدوى في كي ويست (*)
كنتُ ممددا على أريكة، على وشك النوم، عندما تخيلت هيئةً صغيرة نائمةً على أريكة مطابقة لأريكتي. “استيقظ، أيها الرجل الصغير، استيقظ،” صرخت. “التي تنتظرها تصعد من البحر، ملفوفةً بالزّبَد، وقريبا ستصل للشط. تحت قدميها ستتحول حديقة الشجن إلى خضرة ناصعة، والنسمات ستصبح خفيفة كنَفَسِ رضيع. استيقظ، قبل أن تذهب مخلوقة الأعماق ويصبح كل شيء خاويا كالنوم.” كم أحاول أن أوقظ الرجل الصغير بشدة ، وكم ينام هو بشدة. والتي صعدت من البحر، راحت لحظتها، كم أصبحت شديدة – كم أصبحت يابسة تلك العيون المشتعلة، ذلك الشعر المشتعل.
(*) كي ويست هي جزيرة في مضايق فلوريدا بأمريكا الشمالية
لُمّعَ الصوت الخشن حتى صار صوتاً ناعماً، والذي لُمّعَ بدوره حتى أصبح موسيقى. ثم لمّعت الموسيقى حتى أصبحت ذاكرة ليلةٍ في البندقية عندما سقطت دموع البحر من جسر التنهدات، والتي لُمّعتْ أيضا حتى انتهى وجودها وفي مكانها وقف بيت خالٍ لقلبٍ كَدِر. ثم فجأة كانت هناك شمس وعادت الموسيقى وتحرك المرور وهناك في البعد، على حافة المدينة، ظهر خط طويل من الغيوم، وكان هناك رعد، والذي بالرغم من تهديده أصبح موسيقى، وذاكرة الذي حدث بعد البندقية كانت ستبدأ، وما حدث بعد أن انكسر بيت القلب الكدر لنصفين، كان سيبدأ هو الآخر.
إبقاءُ الأشياء كاملةً
في الحقل
أنا غياب الحقل.
هذه
هي الحال دائما.
أينما أكون
أكون أنا ما هو ناقص.
عندما أمشي
أشق الهواء
ودائما
يلتحم الهواء
ليملأ الفراغ
حيث كان جسدي
لدينا كلنا أسباب
للحركة
أنا أتحرك
لأبقي الأشياء كاملة
رجل و جمل
عشية عيد ميلادي الأربعين
جلست في الشرفة لأدخن
عندما مر بي رجل وجمل من العدم.
لم ينطق أيهما بصوت في البداية،
ولكن بينما ينجرفان بطول الشارع
خارجين عن البلدة، بدأ كلاهما في الغناء.
ولكن ما كانا يغنيانه ظل لغزا بالنسبة لي
الكلمات كانت غير واضحة، والنغمة
مزخرفة جدا ليمكنك أن تتذكرها. في الصحراء
دخلا وبينما يمضيان، علا صوتاهما
كصوت واحد فوق صوت الغربلة الذي
للرمال التي تعصف بها الرياح. روعة غنائهما،
خليطه المرواغ من إنسان و جمل، بدا
كصورة مثالية لكل الأزواج النادرين.
هل كانت تلك الليلة التي انتظرتها طويلا؟
أردتُ أن أصدق أنها كذلك،
لكن بالضبط عندما كانا يختفيان، توقف الرجل
والجمل عن الغناء، وركضا عائدين إلى البلدة.
وقفا أمام شرفتي، وحدقا إلى الأعلى إلي بعيونٍ غاضبة
وقالا:
“لقد أفسدته. لقد أفسدته للأبد”
الوصول الغامض لرسالة استثنائية
لقد كان يوما طويلا في المكتب وكانت رحلة طويلة عائدا إلى الشقة الصغيرة التي أعيش فيها. عندما وصلت إلى هناك فتحت النور ورأيت مظروفا على الطاولة وعليه اسمي. أين كانت الساعة؟ أين كان التقويم؟ كان خط أبي، ولكنه كان ميتا منذ أربعين سنة. وكما قد يفعل المرء، بدأت بالتفكير أنه ربما، ربما فقط ، كان حيا، ويعيش حياة سرية في مكان ما بالقرب من هنا. كيف إذن يمكنني أن أفسر المظروف؟ لأهدئ نفسي، جلست، وفتحته، وسحبت الخطاب. “إبني العزيز،” كانت تلك الطريقة التي بدأ بها. “إبني العزيز” ثم لا شيء.
سطور الشتاء
قل لنفسك
بينما يبرد الطقس ويسقط الرمادي من الهواء
أنك ستمضي قدما
ماشيا، سامعا
النغمة نفسها حيثما وجدت نفسك
داخل قبة الظلام
أو تحت الأبيض المتشقق
لنظرة القمر في وادي الثلج.
الليلة وبينما يبرد الطقس
قل لنفسك
ما تعرفه والذي هو لا شيء
إلا النغمة التي تعزفها عظامك
بينما تمضي. وستكون قادرا
لمرةٍ أن تستلقي تحت نار نجوم الشتاء الصغيرة.
وإذا حدث أنك لا تستطيع
أن تمضي قدما أو تعود
ووجدت نفسك
حيثما ستكون في النهاية،
قل لنفسك
في المرور الأخير للبرد عبر أطرافك
أنك تحب ما أنت عليه.
الفكرة
لنا، أيضا، كانت هناك أمنية أن نمتلك
شيئا وراء العالم الذي نعرفه، وراء أنفسنا،
وراء قدرتنا على التخيل، شيء رغم ذلك
نستطيع أن نرى فيه أنفسنا؛ وهذه الرغبة
أتت دائما عابرةً، في الضوء الشاحب، وفي برودة شديدة
لدرجة أن الثلج في بحيرات الوادي تشقق والتفت حوافه،
والجليد العاصف غطى كل الأرض التي رأيناها،
ومشاهد الماضي، عندما طفت ثانيةً على السطح،
لم تبدُ كما كانت عليه، إنما كانت شبحية وبيضاء
بين انحناءات زائفة وامّحاءات مخفية
ولم نشعر أبدا ولو لمرةٍ أننا اقتربنا
حتى الليلة التي قالت فيها الريح، ” لماذا تفعلوا هذا،
الآن بالذات؟ عودوا إلى المكان الذي تنتمون إليه؛”
وهناك ظهر، بنوافذه الوهّاجة، صغيرا،
في البُعد، في المدى المتجمد، كوخ؛
وقفنا أمامه، مندهشين من وجوده هناك،
وكنا لتقدمنا إلى الأمام وفتحنا الباب،
وخطونا إلى داخل الوهج ودفّأنا أنفسنا هناك،
لولا أنه كان لنا بكونه ليس لنا،
ويجب أن يظل خاليا. كانت تلك هي الفكرة.
النهاية
لا يعرف كل رجل ما سيغنيه في النهاية،
مشاهداً المرفأ بينما تبحرُ السفينةُ بعيداً، أو ما الذي سيبدو عليه الأمر
عندما يمسكه زئير البحر، ساكنًا، هناك في النهاية،
أو ما الذي سوف يتمناه عندما يكون واضحا أنه لن يعود أبدًا.
عندما يكون الوقت متأخرًا على تشذيب وردة أو التربيت على قطة،
عندما لا تظهر ثانيةً الشمس وهي تشعل العشب، ولا القمر وهو يُثْلِجُه ثانية.
لا يعرف كل رجل ما الذي سيكتشفه بدلا عن هذا.
عندما يميل ثقل الماضي على اللاشيء،
وتصير السماء ليست أكثر من ضوءٍ مُتَذَكّر، وحكايات السحاب المرتفع
والسحاب المنخفض تأتي لنهاية، وكل الطيور تَعلَقُ في الطيران،
لا يعرف كل رجل ما الذي ينتظره، أو ما الذي سيغنيه
عندما تنزلق سفينته في الظلام، هناك في النهاية
الغموض والعزلة في توبيكا*
العصرُ يغمَقُّ تدريجيا ليصير مساءا. يسقط رجلٌ أعمقَ فأعمقَ في حلزون النوم البطيء، في انجرافته، في طوله، خلال ما يبدو كضباب، ويصل أخيرا إلى باب مفتوح يعبر خلاله من غير أن يعرف السبب، ثم مرةً أخرى ومن غير أن يعرف السبب يذهب إلى غرفة حيث يجلس و ينتظر بينما تبدو الغرفة وكأنها تضيق عليه والظلمة أحلك من أي ظلمة عرفها، ويشعر بشيء يتشكل داخله من دون أن يكون متأكدا مما هو، تنمو سيطرة الشيء عليه، وكأن حكايةً على وشك أن تنفض، فيها شخصيتان، المتعة، والألم، ترتكبان نفس الجريمة، الجريمة التي هي له، التي سيعترف بها مرةً تلو مرةٍ، إلى أن لا تعني شيئا.
(*) توبيكا هي عاصمة ولاية كنساس الأمريكية.
اللاجدوى في كي ويست (*)
كنتُ ممددا على أريكة، على وشك النوم، عندما تخيلت هيئةً صغيرة نائمةً على أريكة مطابقة لأريكتي. “استيقظ، أيها الرجل الصغير، استيقظ،” صرخت. “التي تنتظرها تصعد من البحر، ملفوفةً بالزّبَد، وقريبا ستصل للشط. تحت قدميها ستتحول حديقة الشجن إلى خضرة ناصعة، والنسمات ستصبح خفيفة كنَفَسِ رضيع. استيقظ، قبل أن تذهب مخلوقة الأعماق ويصبح كل شيء خاويا كالنوم.” كم أحاول أن أوقظ الرجل الصغير بشدة ، وكم ينام هو بشدة. والتي صعدت من البحر، راحت لحظتها، كم أصبحت شديدة – كم أصبحت يابسة تلك العيون المشتعلة، ذلك الشعر المشتعل.
(*) كي ويست هي جزيرة في مضايق فلوريدا بأمريكا الشمالية
July 2, 2019
صحيح، كما قال أحدهم، إن عالما
بلا فردوس، ليس إلا وداعا
سواء ألوحت بيدك أم لم تلوح
فإن كراهة ما قد مضى
لا تغير من كونه وداعا
ببساطة تتحول الكينونة
إلى مناسبة للعزاء، أو الاحتفاء
.......ه
صوت خشن صقل
حتى صار صوتا أنعم
صقل حتى صار موسيقى
ثم صقلت الموسيقى
حتى أصبحت ذكرى ليلة في البندقية
حين انهمرت دموع البحر من جسر التنهدات
و التي بدورها صقلت حتى اختفت
و في موضعها، نهض المنزل الفارغ
لقلب متعب
بلا فردوس، ليس إلا وداعا
سواء ألوحت بيدك أم لم تلوح
فإن كراهة ما قد مضى
لا تغير من كونه وداعا
ببساطة تتحول الكينونة
إلى مناسبة للعزاء، أو الاحتفاء
.......ه
صوت خشن صقل
حتى صار صوتا أنعم
صقل حتى صار موسيقى
ثم صقلت الموسيقى
حتى أصبحت ذكرى ليلة في البندقية
حين انهمرت دموع البحر من جسر التنهدات
و التي بدورها صقلت حتى اختفت
و في موضعها، نهض المنزل الفارغ
لقلب متعب
February 14, 2020
صحيح، كما قال أحدهم، إن عالماً
بلا فردوس، ليس إلا وداعاً
سواء ألوَّحت بيدك أم لم تلوّح،
إنه وداع، وإن لم تداهمك الدموع،
فلا يزال وداعاً، وإن ادّعيت أنك لا تلاحظ.
النوم بعين واحدة مفتوحة - مارك ستراند (ترجمة: سامر أبو هواش).
بلا فردوس، ليس إلا وداعاً
سواء ألوَّحت بيدك أم لم تلوّح،
إنه وداع، وإن لم تداهمك الدموع،
فلا يزال وداعاً، وإن ادّعيت أنك لا تلاحظ.
النوم بعين واحدة مفتوحة - مارك ستراند (ترجمة: سامر أبو هواش).
June 14, 2021
لا مكان نذهب إليه، ولا سبب لنبقى
/
أحببته
/
أحببته
May 5, 2018
mysterious and deep. perfect combination.
May 11, 2018
الكتاب جيد نوعًا ما ولكنني لست من الذين يتشجعون عند قراءة دواوين تسودها المفردات الكئيبة المليئة بالوحده والمشاعر الحزينة ، بالرغم من عمقه ولكن للأسف يذكرك بحتمية واحدة لا مفر منه ( الوحدة ، الشيخوخة، الموت)! أعطيه ⭐️⭐️ونصف
July 20, 2022
This collection is a selection of poems by Mark Strand from previous collections up to 1990, which is the same year he served as poet laureate of the United States. His poems use simple language and images, but sometimes surreal and unexpected juxtaposition of those images.
The first poem of the collection is “Sleeping with One Eye Open.” The speaker is awake at night in his bed in a frightened state, reporting his sensations and hoping nothing bad will happen to him. The poem manages to invoke a sense of anxiety through the eerie silence of objects like trees and windows. It is interesting how the poem creates this uneasy sensation through the silence of objects at night.
“When the Vacation is Over for Good” is seemingly about the end of a vacation, but really is about inevitability of death.
“Violent Storm” is a poem about the different reactions people have to a storm. It is about one event can cause anxiety in some and the other event just be a notan and forgotten minor event.
“Old People on the Nursing Home Porch” tells of elderly people on the porch of a nursery home who only have the dull past to reflect upon and their regrets of all the things they never did or had the opportunity to do. The images of this poem blew me away and how much meaning and feeling is contracted into such a compacted poem.
“Keeping Things Whole” suggest we interrupt the wholeness of things with our presence. An object or nature can’t be its truth self while we are there and present. We get a sense that our presence interrupts something else, which causes the speaker of the poem to keep moving, but this also suggests perpetual becoming. As we move to stop interrupting one thing, we will inevitably interrupt some other thing from its wholeness. Being interrupts, but becoming implies future interruptions. We can never ourselves be whole.
“The Tunnel” feature a man who grows anxious over another man in his yard who won’t respond to him and eventually digs a tunnel to his neighbor’s yard and then becomes trapped as he is too tired to move anymore. This poem suggest our inability to communicate with other people: we feel fear, anxiety over them, and think the worst of them, but fail to consider that they would think the same of us if we were in their same situation.
“Taking a walk” describes a walk through nature. As a kind of poetic anti-poem, the people walking come to realize that all these beautiful things of nature don’t symbolize anything deeper about life or refer to some deeper truth about humanity. The beauty they find wasn’t “planned with us in mind.” Nature’s beauty has no deeper meaning than to be beautiful. It just is. The speakers become frustrated with this new understanding of nature just being what it is with no deeper hidden meaning. It gives them a sense that they don’t belong and loneliness. The ending of the poem takes an ironic turn in which their reactions to the possibility that nature and the world doesn’t have any deeper meaning does end up revealing a deeper psychological truth about humanity. They walk off in the end and rationalize that they don’t care that nature wasn’t made for them and isn’t some sort of endless mirror of the human condition. The additional irony being this protest is a way for the humans to reestablish their self-importance by declaring their insouciance to all these observations.
“The Man in the Tree” is one of the more surreal poems of the collection. A naked man in a tree attempts to converse with a clothed person below in a trench coat. This is a difficult poem to interpret due to the surreal imagery, but there is a sense that the images deal with the difficulty of communication and expressing your true feelings, especially between people in some kind of intimate relationship.
The first person speaker in the tree is juxtaposed as an opposite to the person on the ground. One is naked, the other is wearing a trench coat; one is up high in a tree, the other is down below on the ground. Even the choice of the first “I” and “you” rather than pronouns like “he” or “she” amplify this relation juxtaposition. The first image we have is the wind blowing against them; one is completely naked and up in the tree as of to experience the wind and confront it head on, while the trench coat offers some protection against the wind. The trench coat person opens it as if considering becoming naked and joining the naked person in the tree, suggesting a desire to partially compromise and meet the person part of the way, but this releases moths. Moths in clothing will damage the clothing and also usually don’t stir unless disturbed. This image of moths coming out of the trench coat suggests an infestation, damage, and something has happened to disturb them. Each thing the trench coat person says floats to the ground never reaching the person in the tree. These images combined give the sense that there is disturbance or problem in their relationship and that they are opposed to each other, they are failing to communicate effectively about their issues and differences, but the willingness to open the trench coat also suggests a desire to rectify the issue.The wind is soon replaced by the snow. If the trench coat man’s words fall to the ground unheard, then the snow from the clouds lands on the person in the tree’s ears as if he is communicating with something even higher and greater than himself, an almost religious epiphany. Meanwhile the moths from the trench coat man fly into the snow, trying to infect it as if they are symbol of growing discontent. The wind goes under the arms of the man in the tree, suggesting the wind is trying to lift him in flight, while it goes under the trench coat man’s chin trying to raise his head upward. In the most straightforward statement of the poem, we learn that lives of these have gone awry and it’s not clear why:
“I shall never know why Our lives took a turn for the worse”
This further confirms that we are supposed to read these two figures as being in some kind of relationship.
As the man in the tree start to elevate among starlings and view fields of fern presumably from above, all images of ascension and flight, he wipes them away in order to see the trench coat person. The naked person wants enlightenment, but staves it off with the hopes of communicating with the other person. In response, the trench coat person strips naked. The tree withdraws from the naked man and he incorporates the wind into himself. If the wind was what they were each facing together at the beginning and represented strife and each dealt with it differently, now the naked man is trying to make the pain and strife become part of himself as part of his attempt to reconnect with the now naked trench coat person, while recognizing that everything in life is uncertain. The final lines switch to being a self-referential lines about the poem we are reading stealing these words may not actually be this poem. So on one level the poem seems to be about vulnerability in relationships and the difficulty of communicating our needs and true selves with other people; there is always the potential for failure. The final line seems to add an additional dimension referring to the relationship between the poet, his poem, and the reader; the poet like the naked man in the tree might reach for an ideal vision and want to communicate it perfectly, but the poem itself and what the reader takes away May fall short of a perfect communication, and not be the ideal poem the poet had in mind.
“The Last Bus” is a series of surreal images that conflates a bus trip leaving Rio De Janeiro at the end of a tourist trip and the inevitability of death. The vague images of the trip capture the sense of nostalgia and memories of life that become hazy over time with the ending of our trip and other things like the statue of Christ the Redeemer that is mentioned in the poem as fading away as the bus rolls on represent the faith that comforts us in life, all of which must fade over time as we approach and eventually reach death.
“Moontan” reverses expectations. Instead of a sunlit day, the speaker describes a house, its garden, and its surrounding landscape in the light of the moon. The second stanza has a surprising image where the speaker hears a bark, but it comes from an owl and not a dog. The moonlit allows us to see a familiar world from a different light and therefore see a different side of it. The speakers takes these initial observations and muses that his end (death) will be like relaxing at his ease in darkness, seeing the world from a different perspective, a different light, but the lines are written in such a way that we understand that the speaker has doubts about this observation by using words like “pretending.” He hopes he can die in a relaxed state and just see it as another perspective, but understands in reality he might be frightened and terrified of death, despite this hope. At the end of the poem, the speaker regrets that he will have to return to normal quotidian life under the sun where he will be “invisible” like everybody else.
“The Marriage” describes ordinary details of a marriage as two people are brought together by their respective wind; there is a hint that wind is pushing them away. The wind seems to symbolize destiny or the general direction of our lives. There is a sense that our individual lives are separate winds tossing us about ñ, which sometime collide, but also in which we might not be able to resist their force when they start pushing us away in new directions.
“The Babies” employs repetitive imagery of trying to save the babies and leaves the reader with the same sense of desperation. The babies is about the futile attempt to stop the inevitable loss of innocence as the children will grow up and be exposed to the evils of the world no matter how much we try to fight against it.
“Eating Poetry” is about the speakers love of poetry and how it transforms him. An unsuspecting librarian catches him in this animalistic state. There seems to be a dichotomy presented between the wild frantic energy of poetry in which reading brings us into contact with our deepest and most secret longings versus the controlled orderly image of reading represented by the increasingly flustered librarian. The opening line is such a great image:
“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.”
“The Dirty Hand” is a poem where the speaker bemoans a hand that can never become clean no matter how much he tries to wash it. He wishes that “it would turn to diamond or crystal or even, at last, into a plain white hand, the clean hand of a man, that you could shake.” The dirt is not ordinary dirty, but made sadness and anguish. The dirty hand represents our guilt, shame, and regrets. As the part of the poem where the longs to have a diamond or crystal hand suggests all humans have a longing for perfection. The hand itself is part of this shame and guilt as if suggesting guilt and shame from one thing leads to us feeling further guilt and shame that we feel guilty and shameful in the first place.
“The Remains” is a poem about our lives and trying to turn back the past and the futility of resisting time and death. This poem was incredible how it packed so much in so little and with such simple language.
“The Room” is a poem about a man falling asleep and experiencing his worst fears and anxieties, but the poem ends by suggesting it would be better if terrible things happened without us worrying about them. In other words, it is our anxiety and fear about them, not the evils themselves, which is the problem and far worse.
“The Good Life” is about the way we accidentally stumble upon the good life when we aren’t looking for it.
“ The hill” is about the speaker climbing a hill using his own two leg after missing a bus and taxi, which becomes a metaphor for our life journey. The missed bus and taxis represent missed opportunities and different choices that perhaps would’ve been easier than the choices we made. He walks passed a tree with “rattling its black leaves,” which is a symbol of death threatening him, but still he must complete his journey of days and years.
“Coming to This” is a poem in which the speakers has chosen to “welcome grief” and cannot escape the ruin brought on by bad choices that have become habit and choosing difficult relationships that are more work than pleasure. They have chosen all this at the expense of their dreams. They sit an uneaten meal. Everything has lost all its meaning and their is no purpose left in life for them to continue doing anything. The only real reward for living life in this way is that you have no hope for the future and you also can’t lose anything of value since nothing has a value anymore.
“The Prediction” tells of a young woman walking under the moonlight by pond who considers her future when her husband will be along with herself and her children grown up. Like many of Strand’s poems it deals with a person pondering the inevitability of death, the passage of time, and the anxiety caused by this. We also have the familiar image of the moon whose light acts as an epiphany in so many of Strand’s poems. There is added meta-poetic quality in which the woman also foresees the writing of the poem itself that is currently be told bringing into the view the complicated relationship between life and art: the transformation of our fears of the future into artistic revelation that transcends our personal concerns and becomes the worries of the reader.
“My Life” tells the different roles the speaker has played as a kind of toy to be manipulated and used differently by the different women in his lives: mom, wife, and daughter. It ends with another meditation on the inevitability of death.
“The Dreadful has Already Happened” is about the speaker being encouraged by his older family members to interact with a baby as he foresees a storm coming, culminating him being encouraged to break the baby’s legs. As the ending of the poem reveals the baby is him and his childhood innocence being forced to grow up and injure his childhood innocence by the adults, while the approaching storm is the sense of foreboding about the future of adulthood.
“My Life by Somebody Else” is about the alienation and disconnection we feel towards our own life. The poem suggests the speaker can only connect with himself again by pretending to be somebody else writing about himself. Besides alienation from ourselves, this also seems to be about the relationship between art and the writer. The poet can only see themselves by trying to use their life for their art, which allows them a new perspective and connection to their own lives.
“Not Dying” is the opposite of so many of his other poems that muse on the inevitability of death. It is about his mother and despite his age and changes, he is still the same little boy with his mother:
“These wrinkles are nothing. These gray hairs are nothing. This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.”
“Elegy for my Father” is written as a poem about the death of the poet’s father. It also fits into the themes of the inevitability of death and passage of time, and our futility in resisting it. This one was sad and the ending really capture the “nothingness” of death.
“For Jessica, My Daughter” is a poem written to provide his daughter comfort and give her a little guidance in the dark.
“The Story of Our Lives” is a seven-part poem about a man and a woman in a relationship whose lives are guided and reflected in a book that is the story of their life. In the poem, they struggle to resist the story and control it or ignore it or just read it fascination and inevitability. The poem raises the question how much of our lives can we control, how beholden are we to the past, and how much can we resist the stories we have already started creating in our lives by our decisions.
“The Untelling” is about writing and rewriting a poem about a memory of a hot August day at a lake with cousins, men in white shirts, and a woman in a yellow dress. However, the speaker of the poem grows increasingly frustrated with the details of the telling and with each new retelling the details change. Towards the end the retellings grow increasingly symbolic. The last two symbolic retelling of the events seem to symbolize the inevitability of death and loneliness. The retelling and frustration with the details suggest the difficulty of memory of how things actually happened and the complicated relationship to what these events mean both to the poet as an individual and the reader. It also hints how our memories of the past subtly change as we age and what we consider important. The meaning of our experiences change with time, even when considering the same events, and therefore the details that matter to us change. The poem also explores the role of the writer and poet and when writing a poem for an audience.
“The Coming of Light” is a short poem with surreal images that takes on a hopeful tone in which no matter how late it might seem there is light, happiness, dreams, and magic to look forward to where even dust and bones exudes life, light, and energy. There is always potential rebirth.
“From the Long Sad Party” tells of a speaker recalling sad anecdotes they heard at a long party symbolizing things like the fleetingness of life and experiences, how the world goes on without us, the sameness and boringness of our experiences, and the distance we have to others and our smallness in the grand scheme of the universe. This poem does a great job at using really simple language and images to paint a somber mood.
“Poor North” describes a cold winter day where a man goes off to work at a failing job and his wife stays home thinking in regret about the life that she lost by marrying this man even while admitting it wasn’t anything special. The final stanza has the couple walking together in the cold against the wind, which symbolizes strife and struggle as in Strand’s other poems. Even though both of them seem to have regrets and unhappiness in their life, they confront life’s challenges and difficulties together as best they can. The final image is the wind carrying their breath away symbolizing the wind and life’s challenges attempting to steal away what little life they have left. It’s about the tenacity of facing the difficulties of life, while the last lines leave it unclear who will win and whether they will beat life’s tribulations. It remains ambiguous and unanswered.
“Where are the Waters of Childhood” is a reminiscent of the speaker’s childhood full of nostalgia for his childhood home and life with his parents.
“Night-Piece” is a poem about the night and how the world comes to a halt at night and the joy of morning when “the world assembles itself once more.”
“Nights in Hackett’s Cove” captures the speaker’s nostalgia and longing to return back to Hackett’s Cove. As the speaker notes his longing to return surprises him as he recalls the memory and sensations of his time spent in Hackett’s Cove. This poem has parallels to “The Last Bus” and “The Untelling.”
Overall I really enjoyed Mark Strand’s poems and plan to read more in the future.
The first poem of the collection is “Sleeping with One Eye Open.” The speaker is awake at night in his bed in a frightened state, reporting his sensations and hoping nothing bad will happen to him. The poem manages to invoke a sense of anxiety through the eerie silence of objects like trees and windows. It is interesting how the poem creates this uneasy sensation through the silence of objects at night.
“When the Vacation is Over for Good” is seemingly about the end of a vacation, but really is about inevitability of death.
“Violent Storm” is a poem about the different reactions people have to a storm. It is about one event can cause anxiety in some and the other event just be a notan and forgotten minor event.
“Old People on the Nursing Home Porch” tells of elderly people on the porch of a nursery home who only have the dull past to reflect upon and their regrets of all the things they never did or had the opportunity to do. The images of this poem blew me away and how much meaning and feeling is contracted into such a compacted poem.
“Keeping Things Whole” suggest we interrupt the wholeness of things with our presence. An object or nature can’t be its truth self while we are there and present. We get a sense that our presence interrupts something else, which causes the speaker of the poem to keep moving, but this also suggests perpetual becoming. As we move to stop interrupting one thing, we will inevitably interrupt some other thing from its wholeness. Being interrupts, but becoming implies future interruptions. We can never ourselves be whole.
“The Tunnel” feature a man who grows anxious over another man in his yard who won’t respond to him and eventually digs a tunnel to his neighbor’s yard and then becomes trapped as he is too tired to move anymore. This poem suggest our inability to communicate with other people: we feel fear, anxiety over them, and think the worst of them, but fail to consider that they would think the same of us if we were in their same situation.
“Taking a walk” describes a walk through nature. As a kind of poetic anti-poem, the people walking come to realize that all these beautiful things of nature don’t symbolize anything deeper about life or refer to some deeper truth about humanity. The beauty they find wasn’t “planned with us in mind.” Nature’s beauty has no deeper meaning than to be beautiful. It just is. The speakers become frustrated with this new understanding of nature just being what it is with no deeper hidden meaning. It gives them a sense that they don’t belong and loneliness. The ending of the poem takes an ironic turn in which their reactions to the possibility that nature and the world doesn’t have any deeper meaning does end up revealing a deeper psychological truth about humanity. They walk off in the end and rationalize that they don’t care that nature wasn’t made for them and isn’t some sort of endless mirror of the human condition. The additional irony being this protest is a way for the humans to reestablish their self-importance by declaring their insouciance to all these observations.
“The Man in the Tree” is one of the more surreal poems of the collection. A naked man in a tree attempts to converse with a clothed person below in a trench coat. This is a difficult poem to interpret due to the surreal imagery, but there is a sense that the images deal with the difficulty of communication and expressing your true feelings, especially between people in some kind of intimate relationship.
The first person speaker in the tree is juxtaposed as an opposite to the person on the ground. One is naked, the other is wearing a trench coat; one is up high in a tree, the other is down below on the ground. Even the choice of the first “I” and “you” rather than pronouns like “he” or “she” amplify this relation juxtaposition. The first image we have is the wind blowing against them; one is completely naked and up in the tree as of to experience the wind and confront it head on, while the trench coat offers some protection against the wind. The trench coat person opens it as if considering becoming naked and joining the naked person in the tree, suggesting a desire to partially compromise and meet the person part of the way, but this releases moths. Moths in clothing will damage the clothing and also usually don’t stir unless disturbed. This image of moths coming out of the trench coat suggests an infestation, damage, and something has happened to disturb them. Each thing the trench coat person says floats to the ground never reaching the person in the tree. These images combined give the sense that there is disturbance or problem in their relationship and that they are opposed to each other, they are failing to communicate effectively about their issues and differences, but the willingness to open the trench coat also suggests a desire to rectify the issue.The wind is soon replaced by the snow. If the trench coat man’s words fall to the ground unheard, then the snow from the clouds lands on the person in the tree’s ears as if he is communicating with something even higher and greater than himself, an almost religious epiphany. Meanwhile the moths from the trench coat man fly into the snow, trying to infect it as if they are symbol of growing discontent. The wind goes under the arms of the man in the tree, suggesting the wind is trying to lift him in flight, while it goes under the trench coat man’s chin trying to raise his head upward. In the most straightforward statement of the poem, we learn that lives of these have gone awry and it’s not clear why:
“I shall never know why Our lives took a turn for the worse”
This further confirms that we are supposed to read these two figures as being in some kind of relationship.
As the man in the tree start to elevate among starlings and view fields of fern presumably from above, all images of ascension and flight, he wipes them away in order to see the trench coat person. The naked person wants enlightenment, but staves it off with the hopes of communicating with the other person. In response, the trench coat person strips naked. The tree withdraws from the naked man and he incorporates the wind into himself. If the wind was what they were each facing together at the beginning and represented strife and each dealt with it differently, now the naked man is trying to make the pain and strife become part of himself as part of his attempt to reconnect with the now naked trench coat person, while recognizing that everything in life is uncertain. The final lines switch to being a self-referential lines about the poem we are reading stealing these words may not actually be this poem. So on one level the poem seems to be about vulnerability in relationships and the difficulty of communicating our needs and true selves with other people; there is always the potential for failure. The final line seems to add an additional dimension referring to the relationship between the poet, his poem, and the reader; the poet like the naked man in the tree might reach for an ideal vision and want to communicate it perfectly, but the poem itself and what the reader takes away May fall short of a perfect communication, and not be the ideal poem the poet had in mind.
“The Last Bus” is a series of surreal images that conflates a bus trip leaving Rio De Janeiro at the end of a tourist trip and the inevitability of death. The vague images of the trip capture the sense of nostalgia and memories of life that become hazy over time with the ending of our trip and other things like the statue of Christ the Redeemer that is mentioned in the poem as fading away as the bus rolls on represent the faith that comforts us in life, all of which must fade over time as we approach and eventually reach death.
“Moontan” reverses expectations. Instead of a sunlit day, the speaker describes a house, its garden, and its surrounding landscape in the light of the moon. The second stanza has a surprising image where the speaker hears a bark, but it comes from an owl and not a dog. The moonlit allows us to see a familiar world from a different light and therefore see a different side of it. The speakers takes these initial observations and muses that his end (death) will be like relaxing at his ease in darkness, seeing the world from a different perspective, a different light, but the lines are written in such a way that we understand that the speaker has doubts about this observation by using words like “pretending.” He hopes he can die in a relaxed state and just see it as another perspective, but understands in reality he might be frightened and terrified of death, despite this hope. At the end of the poem, the speaker regrets that he will have to return to normal quotidian life under the sun where he will be “invisible” like everybody else.
“The Marriage” describes ordinary details of a marriage as two people are brought together by their respective wind; there is a hint that wind is pushing them away. The wind seems to symbolize destiny or the general direction of our lives. There is a sense that our individual lives are separate winds tossing us about ñ, which sometime collide, but also in which we might not be able to resist their force when they start pushing us away in new directions.
“The Babies” employs repetitive imagery of trying to save the babies and leaves the reader with the same sense of desperation. The babies is about the futile attempt to stop the inevitable loss of innocence as the children will grow up and be exposed to the evils of the world no matter how much we try to fight against it.
“Eating Poetry” is about the speakers love of poetry and how it transforms him. An unsuspecting librarian catches him in this animalistic state. There seems to be a dichotomy presented between the wild frantic energy of poetry in which reading brings us into contact with our deepest and most secret longings versus the controlled orderly image of reading represented by the increasingly flustered librarian. The opening line is such a great image:
“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.”
“The Dirty Hand” is a poem where the speaker bemoans a hand that can never become clean no matter how much he tries to wash it. He wishes that “it would turn to diamond or crystal or even, at last, into a plain white hand, the clean hand of a man, that you could shake.” The dirt is not ordinary dirty, but made sadness and anguish. The dirty hand represents our guilt, shame, and regrets. As the part of the poem where the longs to have a diamond or crystal hand suggests all humans have a longing for perfection. The hand itself is part of this shame and guilt as if suggesting guilt and shame from one thing leads to us feeling further guilt and shame that we feel guilty and shameful in the first place.
“The Remains” is a poem about our lives and trying to turn back the past and the futility of resisting time and death. This poem was incredible how it packed so much in so little and with such simple language.
“The Room” is a poem about a man falling asleep and experiencing his worst fears and anxieties, but the poem ends by suggesting it would be better if terrible things happened without us worrying about them. In other words, it is our anxiety and fear about them, not the evils themselves, which is the problem and far worse.
“The Good Life” is about the way we accidentally stumble upon the good life when we aren’t looking for it.
“ The hill” is about the speaker climbing a hill using his own two leg after missing a bus and taxi, which becomes a metaphor for our life journey. The missed bus and taxis represent missed opportunities and different choices that perhaps would’ve been easier than the choices we made. He walks passed a tree with “rattling its black leaves,” which is a symbol of death threatening him, but still he must complete his journey of days and years.
“Coming to This” is a poem in which the speakers has chosen to “welcome grief” and cannot escape the ruin brought on by bad choices that have become habit and choosing difficult relationships that are more work than pleasure. They have chosen all this at the expense of their dreams. They sit an uneaten meal. Everything has lost all its meaning and their is no purpose left in life for them to continue doing anything. The only real reward for living life in this way is that you have no hope for the future and you also can’t lose anything of value since nothing has a value anymore.
“The Prediction” tells of a young woman walking under the moonlight by pond who considers her future when her husband will be along with herself and her children grown up. Like many of Strand’s poems it deals with a person pondering the inevitability of death, the passage of time, and the anxiety caused by this. We also have the familiar image of the moon whose light acts as an epiphany in so many of Strand’s poems. There is added meta-poetic quality in which the woman also foresees the writing of the poem itself that is currently be told bringing into the view the complicated relationship between life and art: the transformation of our fears of the future into artistic revelation that transcends our personal concerns and becomes the worries of the reader.
“My Life” tells the different roles the speaker has played as a kind of toy to be manipulated and used differently by the different women in his lives: mom, wife, and daughter. It ends with another meditation on the inevitability of death.
“The Dreadful has Already Happened” is about the speaker being encouraged by his older family members to interact with a baby as he foresees a storm coming, culminating him being encouraged to break the baby’s legs. As the ending of the poem reveals the baby is him and his childhood innocence being forced to grow up and injure his childhood innocence by the adults, while the approaching storm is the sense of foreboding about the future of adulthood.
“My Life by Somebody Else” is about the alienation and disconnection we feel towards our own life. The poem suggests the speaker can only connect with himself again by pretending to be somebody else writing about himself. Besides alienation from ourselves, this also seems to be about the relationship between art and the writer. The poet can only see themselves by trying to use their life for their art, which allows them a new perspective and connection to their own lives.
“Not Dying” is the opposite of so many of his other poems that muse on the inevitability of death. It is about his mother and despite his age and changes, he is still the same little boy with his mother:
“These wrinkles are nothing. These gray hairs are nothing. This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.”
“Elegy for my Father” is written as a poem about the death of the poet’s father. It also fits into the themes of the inevitability of death and passage of time, and our futility in resisting it. This one was sad and the ending really capture the “nothingness” of death.
“For Jessica, My Daughter” is a poem written to provide his daughter comfort and give her a little guidance in the dark.
“The Story of Our Lives” is a seven-part poem about a man and a woman in a relationship whose lives are guided and reflected in a book that is the story of their life. In the poem, they struggle to resist the story and control it or ignore it or just read it fascination and inevitability. The poem raises the question how much of our lives can we control, how beholden are we to the past, and how much can we resist the stories we have already started creating in our lives by our decisions.
“The Untelling” is about writing and rewriting a poem about a memory of a hot August day at a lake with cousins, men in white shirts, and a woman in a yellow dress. However, the speaker of the poem grows increasingly frustrated with the details of the telling and with each new retelling the details change. Towards the end the retellings grow increasingly symbolic. The last two symbolic retelling of the events seem to symbolize the inevitability of death and loneliness. The retelling and frustration with the details suggest the difficulty of memory of how things actually happened and the complicated relationship to what these events mean both to the poet as an individual and the reader. It also hints how our memories of the past subtly change as we age and what we consider important. The meaning of our experiences change with time, even when considering the same events, and therefore the details that matter to us change. The poem also explores the role of the writer and poet and when writing a poem for an audience.
“The Coming of Light” is a short poem with surreal images that takes on a hopeful tone in which no matter how late it might seem there is light, happiness, dreams, and magic to look forward to where even dust and bones exudes life, light, and energy. There is always potential rebirth.
“From the Long Sad Party” tells of a speaker recalling sad anecdotes they heard at a long party symbolizing things like the fleetingness of life and experiences, how the world goes on without us, the sameness and boringness of our experiences, and the distance we have to others and our smallness in the grand scheme of the universe. This poem does a great job at using really simple language and images to paint a somber mood.
“Poor North” describes a cold winter day where a man goes off to work at a failing job and his wife stays home thinking in regret about the life that she lost by marrying this man even while admitting it wasn’t anything special. The final stanza has the couple walking together in the cold against the wind, which symbolizes strife and struggle as in Strand’s other poems. Even though both of them seem to have regrets and unhappiness in their life, they confront life’s challenges and difficulties together as best they can. The final image is the wind carrying their breath away symbolizing the wind and life’s challenges attempting to steal away what little life they have left. It’s about the tenacity of facing the difficulties of life, while the last lines leave it unclear who will win and whether they will beat life’s tribulations. It remains ambiguous and unanswered.
“Where are the Waters of Childhood” is a reminiscent of the speaker’s childhood full of nostalgia for his childhood home and life with his parents.
“Night-Piece” is a poem about the night and how the world comes to a halt at night and the joy of morning when “the world assembles itself once more.”
“Nights in Hackett’s Cove” captures the speaker’s nostalgia and longing to return back to Hackett’s Cove. As the speaker notes his longing to return surprises him as he recalls the memory and sensations of his time spent in Hackett’s Cove. This poem has parallels to “The Last Bus” and “The Untelling.”
Overall I really enjoyed Mark Strand’s poems and plan to read more in the future.
April 12, 2024
Laird Barron
gave this five stars;
I
will stick to four.
Send a
homie some
poetry recs!
The less
emo,
the better.
gave this five stars;
I
will stick to four.
Send a
homie some
poetry recs!
The less
emo,
the better.
August 15, 2018
قرأت بعض القصائد بالانجليزية وأعتقد سأبحث عن الأخرى أيضا.
المعاني عظيمة جدا لكن الترجمة خذلتني نوعا ما.
المعاني عظيمة جدا لكن الترجمة خذلتني نوعا ما.
July 15, 2021
My Son
(after Carlos Drummond de Andrade)
My son
my only son,
the one I never had.
would be a man today.
He moves
in the wind,
fleshless, nameless.
Sometimes
he comes
and leans his head,
lighter than air
against my shoulder
and I ask him,
Son,
where do you stay,
where do you hide?
And he answers me
with a cold breath,
You never noticed
though I called
and called
and keep on calling
from a place beyond,
beyond love,
where nothing,
everything,
wants to be born.
If I'm about to be left on an island and given choices between Mark's latest collected poems and this selected edition to keep me company, I'd definitely choose the latter.
(after Carlos Drummond de Andrade)
My son
my only son,
the one I never had.
would be a man today.
He moves
in the wind,
fleshless, nameless.
Sometimes
he comes
and leans his head,
lighter than air
against my shoulder
and I ask him,
Son,
where do you stay,
where do you hide?
And he answers me
with a cold breath,
You never noticed
though I called
and called
and keep on calling
from a place beyond,
beyond love,
where nothing,
everything,
wants to be born.
If I'm about to be left on an island and given choices between Mark's latest collected poems and this selected edition to keep me company, I'd definitely choose the latter.
February 21, 2008
I picked up Mark Strand because Misty said that he and Jimmy wrote similarly. Jimmy, it's true. He can write very simple, very quiet, very understated poems. The themes like absence/presence and time are very clear and done very well. However, there's one marked difference. Strand does not have a sense of humor. This guy is very very sad. His poems are constantly about 'death' or 'nothing' or 'stillness.' The poems seem to slow everything down. The stories are not really stories. Even when he's talking about a character, the character feels like an object among other objects. You get the sense that something very heavy is resting on top of you. It's a neat feeling, but it's also exhausting. Since it's the selected poems, I would recommend reading The Story of Our Lives and skipping The Late Hour. However, I do have to say that I finished this sucker in one day, so the last two sections really seemed to repeat what I'd already heard. I'll have to go back and read them after I've taken a break from my dear sad friend.
January 11, 2008
There is a 2004 date on the title page but all the poems contained herein are from no later than 1980 so I think this is a simple re-issue of the 1980 Selected Poems. I liked the most recent poems the best and got lost in the middle when craft and a detached abstractness seemed to dominate his work. All his poems have the precision of a still-life painter, like Cezanne, and sound good when read aloud. But only a few stay with you past the last syllable read aloud. “The Story of Our Lives,” “The Coming of Light,” “For Jessica, My Daughter,” “From The Long Sad Party,” and “Nights in Hackett’s Cove” were my favorites.
October 15, 2016
In the world of Mark Strand's Poetry
there is perpetual night.
It is perpetually cold,
and perpetually empty.
The house is empty.
The streets are empty.
The sky is empty
and dark.
There is absolutely nothing
to be happy about.
And in this world there is a man,
I believe his name is Mark Strand,
he lives in strange dreams.
But he was right when he said
that nothing, everything wants to be born,
and everything must die.
there is perpetual night.
It is perpetually cold,
and perpetually empty.
The house is empty.
The streets are empty.
The sky is empty
and dark.
There is absolutely nothing
to be happy about.
And in this world there is a man,
I believe his name is Mark Strand,
he lives in strange dreams.
But he was right when he said
that nothing, everything wants to be born,
and everything must die.
October 30, 2008
Amazing collection. Simple language, profound insight. "Black Maps" and "Courtship" alone are worth more than double the cover price of the whole book.
December 14, 2011
"The Prediction" is by far my favorite poem of the last fifty years. Deceptively simple and haunting...the image of the moon turning the lake to milk is brilliant!
July 4, 2022
I had a crush on Mark Strand when I was 12. My New Kids on the Block phase when I wanted to marry Joe. More accurately, I suppose, I had a crush on Joe and a crush on Mark Strand’s poetry. There wasn’t much variety of poetry to be found in the local libraries (still isn’t) and I hadn’t discovered the Cold War era Eastern European poets yet. Or world poetry. And I haven’t read Mark Strand in 30 years. I recently learned he passed in 2014. So I decided to go back and see what my mature mind thinks of Strand (I am mortified by the NKOTB phase and am generally disgusted by the boy band concept now). In one of his poems, he says (not a direct quote, more of something along the lines of) “I was tired of the moon, it’s perpetual look of astonishment”. And in my mind I saw the man in the moon and realized he does look perpetually astonished. Verdict: not every Strand poem I relished at 12 holds up to my mind now. But some are breathtaking still.
July 6, 2022
الشعر المترجم ينتزع كثيراً من خصاله الفيزيائية و يتحلل كيميائياً أثناء ترجمته و يغدو عملاً منفراً ، مستبعداً من قبل الثقافتين الأصلية و المتبناة إلا أن سامي أبو الهوّاش حافظ على الطبيعة الفيزيائية لشعر مارك ستراند و لو تنقّلت من حالة إلى أخرى دون النزوح إلى تجريدات اضطرارية أو قولبات إمحائية
تكفيكم أيها المترجمون هذه الأمانة لأنكم غير مسؤولين عن وجهة نظر الكاتب أو تملكون مصادرة رأيه أو الطعن بأفكاره و هذا برأيي عسير جداً على الديكتاتوريين الذين يمنحون ذواتهم حق التصرف الأدبي
ذلك أن مأرب الترجمة الصرف يعلو على تصحيحات العقل التلقائية و المقصودة و هي النقل لا تحريكه و المترجم تتأتى له النتائج الأفضل حينما يترجم بعين واحدة مفتوحة لأنه أغمض الأخرى مع المستبد الرائي بها .
تكفيكم أيها المترجمون هذه الأمانة لأنكم غير مسؤولين عن وجهة نظر الكاتب أو تملكون مصادرة رأيه أو الطعن بأفكاره و هذا برأيي عسير جداً على الديكتاتوريين الذين يمنحون ذواتهم حق التصرف الأدبي
ذلك أن مأرب الترجمة الصرف يعلو على تصحيحات العقل التلقائية و المقصودة و هي النقل لا تحريكه و المترجم تتأتى له النتائج الأفضل حينما يترجم بعين واحدة مفتوحة لأنه أغمض الأخرى مع المستبد الرائي بها .
January 7, 2023
I read this because I love the poem Eating Poetry and I assumed that there would be more works like that in this selection.There was not. I don't read much poetry so I feel very neutral about this. It was probably good.
January 21, 2024
Two stars is a reflection of me rather than the poetry. I came across Mark Strand's poem "Lines of Winter" recently and fell in love with it immediately. After reading this collection though, it remains the only one I really connected with.
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