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New Selected Poems
More than twenty-five years after the appearance of his first Selected Poems , we at last have a magnificent new gathering of Mark Strand’s work, one that spans and celebrates his entire remarkable career to date. From Sleeping with One Eye Open (1964) through the wonderful middle work that includes The Continuous Life (1990), and crowned by the Pulitzer Prize–winning Blizzard of One (1998) and his most recent collection, Man and Camel (2006), this book makes a crucial selection of Strand’s always beautiful and by turns humorous and melancholy poems.
Over the decades Strand’s identity as a poet has remained he is existential, playful, mysterious, a poet of simple words and sentences that somehow add up to powerful universal experiences. With his incantatory language and radiant, commanding imagery, he creates mythic scenes and vistas that, however otherworldly, are ultimately of this their underlying subject the pain and pleasure of being mortal.
Here is an essential compilation from one of the most beloved and honored American poets at work today, without which no modern poetry collection is complete.
Over the decades Strand’s identity as a poet has remained he is existential, playful, mysterious, a poet of simple words and sentences that somehow add up to powerful universal experiences. With his incantatory language and radiant, commanding imagery, he creates mythic scenes and vistas that, however otherworldly, are ultimately of this their underlying subject the pain and pleasure of being mortal.
Here is an essential compilation from one of the most beloved and honored American poets at work today, without which no modern poetry collection is complete.
- GenresPoetry
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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272 people want to read
About the author
Mark Strand
181 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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April 20, 2023
We are reading the story of our lives
as though we were in it
The world lost a great voice and vision with the passing of Mark Strand in November, 2014. ‘Wherever I am / I am what is missing,’ wrote Strand, and nothing could be more apt than this about his eternal, poetic mark upon the world. Strand built prose that probed the ineffable, arranged words that pointed to the absences and loneliness of life. His poems reflect ‘the one clear place given to us when we are alone’, and these moments of clarity fill the unlit rooms of the soul with a bright light of beauty and empathy. New Selected Poems is a luminous voyage across Strand’s career, displaying his early promise to the refined poetry of his later years that mined his early ideas and sent them soaring with elegant grace that feels more like a causal breath than a great endeavour. Included are the selected poems from his early work in Sleeping With One Eye Open (1964) through Man and Camel in 2006, and includes his brilliant, Pulitzer Prize winning Blizzard of One. Strand has a natural gift to single out the moments of solitude and alienation in our lives that speak greater volumes on the language of our souls than any of our actions could ever manage.
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 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.
‘Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness,’ said Strand in an interiew with the Paris Review. Strand creates a poetic dialogue out of his tender and daring examinations of nothingness, giving voice to our silences, our awkward pauses, our feelings of loneliness, inadequacy and self-reflection. Born on the Price Edward Island in Canada to American parents, Strand came to Philadelphia at the age of four speaking little English and was ‘mocked and brutalized’ by his classmates for his thick French accent. Summers spent in Halifax brought him to the soul-bearing freedom of the wilderness which he ‘internalized.’ Much of this internalization is evident in his matured poetry, and the surreal introspection coupled with the eye for the beauty of the natural world makes one want to call his poetry the offspring of Charles Simic (with whom Strand was friends with beginning in the Sixties) and Mary Oliver, though each poet is unique an inimitable in their own regard. I was particularly moved by his poems involving solitude and soul-searching while dwarfed by the wilderness, which dredged up precious sun-soaked memories of my own childhood summers spent wandering the dense woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with a wonderment that I would suddenly stumble upon a fairy-tale epic adventure in the rich smelling overgrown foliage to match the stories that I had read or were currently writing in my head, a gnarled twig as my sword and a Detroit Red Wings jersey as my armour. How time disillusions us, and how I’d spend my late teens in the same woods hiding a smoking habit while gazing at the Milky Way and hoping that I had some place in it. These thoughts come alive through Strand’s poetry.
A Piece of the Storm
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."
To have lost Mark Strand is a true tragedy, and all the more so that I have only learned of him posthumously due to notices of his passing. He was a beautiful soul who captured the world and human emotion in a jar of prose unlike any other. ‘It is easy to lose oneself in nothing because nothing can interrupt and be unnoticed,’ Strand wrote, but I have conviction that Stand has not been another victim to Nothing, and the chills that coursed through my veins and soul upon reading him are testimony that somewhere, somehow, he is still as alive as ever.
4.5/5
Black Sea
One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long,
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on that lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear . . .
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here?
Old Man Leaves the 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?
For Her¹
Let it be anywhere
on any night you wish,
in your room that is empty and dark
or down the street
or at those dim frontiers
you barely see, barely dream of.
You will not feel desire,
nothing will warn you,
no sudden wind, no stillness of air.
She will appear,
looking like someone you knew:
the friend who wasted her life,
the girl who sat under the palm tree.
Her bracelets will glitter,
becoming the lights
of a village you turned from years ago.
¹ this and The Night, the Porch are my favorites of the collection. My love and adoration of Simic seems to find something so magical in the final few lines, the choice of the word ‘village’ that gives this mystical quality to the past that lies behind us. Love fades, love dies, lovers drift into oblivion, but still they mark a spot on the withered maps of our lives like a village within whose walls we once spent a fortnight of emotional sacrifice.
as though we were in it
The world lost a great voice and vision with the passing of Mark Strand in November, 2014. ‘Wherever I am / I am what is missing,’ wrote Strand, and nothing could be more apt than this about his eternal, poetic mark upon the world. Strand built prose that probed the ineffable, arranged words that pointed to the absences and loneliness of life. His poems reflect ‘the one clear place given to us when we are alone’, and these moments of clarity fill the unlit rooms of the soul with a bright light of beauty and empathy. New Selected Poems is a luminous voyage across Strand’s career, displaying his early promise to the refined poetry of his later years that mined his early ideas and sent them soaring with elegant grace that feels more like a causal breath than a great endeavour. Included are the selected poems from his early work in Sleeping With One Eye Open (1964) through Man and Camel in 2006, and includes his brilliant, Pulitzer Prize winning Blizzard of One. Strand has a natural gift to single out the moments of solitude and alienation in our lives that speak greater volumes on the language of our souls than any of our actions could ever manage.
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 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.
‘Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness,’ said Strand in an interiew with the Paris Review. Strand creates a poetic dialogue out of his tender and daring examinations of nothingness, giving voice to our silences, our awkward pauses, our feelings of loneliness, inadequacy and self-reflection. Born on the Price Edward Island in Canada to American parents, Strand came to Philadelphia at the age of four speaking little English and was ‘mocked and brutalized’ by his classmates for his thick French accent. Summers spent in Halifax brought him to the soul-bearing freedom of the wilderness which he ‘internalized.’ Much of this internalization is evident in his matured poetry, and the surreal introspection coupled with the eye for the beauty of the natural world makes one want to call his poetry the offspring of Charles Simic (with whom Strand was friends with beginning in the Sixties) and Mary Oliver, though each poet is unique an inimitable in their own regard. I was particularly moved by his poems involving solitude and soul-searching while dwarfed by the wilderness, which dredged up precious sun-soaked memories of my own childhood summers spent wandering the dense woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with a wonderment that I would suddenly stumble upon a fairy-tale epic adventure in the rich smelling overgrown foliage to match the stories that I had read or were currently writing in my head, a gnarled twig as my sword and a Detroit Red Wings jersey as my armour. How time disillusions us, and how I’d spend my late teens in the same woods hiding a smoking habit while gazing at the Milky Way and hoping that I had some place in it. These thoughts come alive through Strand’s poetry.
Those nights I would gaze at the bay road,Lines such as these took my soul in hand and made me believe that both the words and my soul were cut from the same cloth and same memories. Strand fully captures those moments of wishful thinking, late night longings and the blissful pains of loneliness that visit us all. There are moments that are outright tragic like dreams of lost loves suddenly showing up at your doorstep and throwing themselves upon you, or of truth and faith being outright denied to you when it lingers in the air just beyond grasp, and there are moments of utter beauty and empathy that make the reader cry out in joy for being felt—if only for a brief passing of lines—understood and not so alone in the world as once thought.
at the cottages clustered under the moon’s immaculate stare,
nothing hinted that I would suffer so late
this turning away, this longing to be there.
A Piece of the Storm
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."
To have lost Mark Strand is a true tragedy, and all the more so that I have only learned of him posthumously due to notices of his passing. He was a beautiful soul who captured the world and human emotion in a jar of prose unlike any other. ‘It is easy to lose oneself in nothing because nothing can interrupt and be unnoticed,’ Strand wrote, but I have conviction that Stand has not been another victim to Nothing, and the chills that coursed through my veins and soul upon reading him are testimony that somewhere, somehow, he is still as alive as ever.
4.5/5
Black Sea
One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long,
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on that lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear . . .
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here?
Old Man Leaves the 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?
For Her¹
Let it be anywhere
on any night you wish,
in your room that is empty and dark
or down the street
or at those dim frontiers
you barely see, barely dream of.
You will not feel desire,
nothing will warn you,
no sudden wind, no stillness of air.
She will appear,
looking like someone you knew:
the friend who wasted her life,
the girl who sat under the palm tree.
Her bracelets will glitter,
becoming the lights
of a village you turned from years ago.
¹ this and The Night, the Porch are my favorites of the collection. My love and adoration of Simic seems to find something so magical in the final few lines, the choice of the word ‘village’ that gives this mystical quality to the past that lies behind us. Love fades, love dies, lovers drift into oblivion, but still they mark a spot on the withered maps of our lives like a village within whose walls we once spent a fortnight of emotional sacrifice.
November 28, 2020
Oh you can make fun of the splendors of moonlight,
But what would the human heart be if it wanted
Only the dark, wanted nothing on earth
But the sea’s ink or the rock’s black shade?
On a summer night to launch yourself into the silver
Emptiness of air and look over the pale fields
At rest under the sullen stare of the moon,
And to linger in the depths of your vision and wonder
How in this whiteness what you love is past
Grief, and how in the long valley of your looking
Hope grows, and there, under the distant,
Barely perceptible fire of all the stars,
To feel yourself wake into change, as if your change
Were immense and figured into the heavens’ longing.
And yet all you want is to rise out of the shade
Of yourself into the cooling blaze of a summer night
When the moon shines and the earth itself
Is covered and silent in the stoniness of its sleep.
But what would the human heart be if it wanted
Only the dark, wanted nothing on earth
But the sea’s ink or the rock’s black shade?
On a summer night to launch yourself into the silver
Emptiness of air and look over the pale fields
At rest under the sullen stare of the moon,
And to linger in the depths of your vision and wonder
How in this whiteness what you love is past
Grief, and how in the long valley of your looking
Hope grows, and there, under the distant,
Barely perceptible fire of all the stars,
To feel yourself wake into change, as if your change
Were immense and figured into the heavens’ longing.
And yet all you want is to rise out of the shade
Of yourself into the cooling blaze of a summer night
When the moon shines and the earth itself
Is covered and silent in the stoniness of its sleep.
December 28, 2017
It's silly to berate myself for coming so late to the work of this "beloved and honored" American poet, who died only recently in 2014. My prejudice again subtly at work for its true I do not seek out American poets like I used to, in favor of the poetry of the dispossessed, from Canada and far flung countries. But I read a poem by MS in an anthology and wanted more.
Even then , my life seemed far away as though it were waiting for me to discover it.
from the Untelling p89
This Anthology is collected from early to unpublished work, including his Pulitzer prize Blizzard of One. The verve and precision of his vocabulary and the placement of each word on the page ground the reader in the present even when the meaning is somewhat obscure to the uninitiated.
But if you will step out of your dress and move into the shade
the mole will find you, so will the owl, and so will the poem.
p51 The dress
Even then , my life seemed far away as though it were waiting for me to discover it.
from the Untelling p89
This Anthology is collected from early to unpublished work, including his Pulitzer prize Blizzard of One. The verve and precision of his vocabulary and the placement of each word on the page ground the reader in the present even when the meaning is somewhat obscure to the uninitiated.
But if you will step out of your dress and move into the shade
the mole will find you, so will the owl, and so will the poem.
p51 The dress
July 12, 2016
Full disclosure first: Mark Strand is my favorite contemporary American poet. This book is an well selected - I guess by the poet himself - collection of Strand's work. I first picked it up just to flip through and read a few of my favorite poems. Instead I decided to read it from cover to cover and it was a very interesting experience. Reading his poems chronologically and noticing how he evolved, how some topics are recurrent and how he changed his poetic discourse throughout the years increased my admiration of his work.
June 24, 2008
A nice mix of the abstract, the philosophical, and the concrete. This collected work is one to study for the modern poet and one to read for pleasure for everyone else.
December 15, 2007
I know Strand should get the five stars given his reputation, but he is someone I find at times enjoyable and at times annoying. His earlier and most recent poems strike me as the most natural, while his Pulitzer Prize collection (Blizzard of One) is too overwritten for my tastes.
March 4, 2008
"I think of the innocent lives
Of people in novels who know they'll die
But not that the novel will end. How different they are
From us."
Of people in novels who know they'll die
But not that the novel will end. How different they are
From us."
September 21, 2014
Mostly good, mostly not totally mind-blowing? Some of the poems just seem a little too "easy," if that's a word I can use with poetry.
July 10, 2025
I find the younger Strand a bit glib. For me, indisputably the later collection Blizzard of One is not only Strand at the height of his powers, but also the most consistently strong of his books. The Story of Our Lives is a slightly more distant second for me, with the remarkable (pun intended) poem "The Unwriting" being a standout favorite. (I do also find the titular poem of that collection to be strong, but a bit more muscular and -- both in plot and in style -- oddly reminiscent of the Hemmingway story "The End of Something" (from *In Our Time,* where Nick breaks up with Marjorie). In Dark Harbor, the book which precedes Blizzard, Strand's technical poetic faculties have fully matured, but the creative vision is less exciting -- but many lines are certainly masterful. In fact, I'd say that my biggest problem with strand is not his lack of gift, but some ineffable coldness to his works; I feel similarly about Don DeLillo, actually. I can describe it no other way than to say this: Strand's voice is distinctive, but the person behind it could be anyone. I know a Strand poem when I read it, but I still have no idea who Strand is, really. For this reason, chief among others, I don't feel very moved by Strand's poems, which for me lack the necessary intimacy and sense of personal and artistic stakes. It's an enjoyable collection with many very good to great poems, but in the end if you've just read Blizzard of One before reading this (as I had), you'll be disappointed.
November 20, 2017
Reading NEW SELECTED POEMS by Mark Strand was like watching someone else’s life pass before my eyes. They start death-obsessed, or so the plain language read to me, almost but not speaking to the weight of the coming end. Then they grow more surreal and natural at the same time, full of experience and joy. I guess when poets start writing they look towards their inevitable end, but if they’re lucky enough to reach an old age their sights are set back across the long life they lived.
December 15, 2023
I wasn't too enamored with this book. The first half just spoke about about death, a lot. It was just depressing and disheartening reading poem after poem about it.
The last third of the book was much better and more engaging for me.
My favorites:
From a Litany - it mentions Georgetown, Maine - my home state!
XLIV from Dark Harbor - with both the ocean and the mountains you can never go wrong!
The last third of the book was much better and more engaging for me.
My favorites:
From a Litany - it mentions Georgetown, Maine - my home state!
XLIV from Dark Harbor - with both the ocean and the mountains you can never go wrong!
February 21, 2017
no poetic artifice, fairly straight forward unimaginative poetry, if you want a book to fall asleep to this is it
October 9, 2019
Some of these poems were absolute gems. Many were like pieces of junk mail fluttering from my arms as I walk back from my mailbox.
April 26, 2022
Did not bring me much joy. Got my copy out of Little Free Library and it had someone else's useless notes all through it. I wanted to like the poems more than I did.
January 13, 2020
Whomever selected the poems for this collection did a terrible job, but more on that in a bit. This book collects poems from eleven of Mark Strand's previous poetry collections which span from 1963 to 1998. I've never read Strand's poetry but this seemed like a good opportunity to give it a try. Strand is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a U.S. Poet Laureate, so I thought that this would be a brilliant book of poetry. How wrong I was!
I despise Strand's style, which is simplistic yet overly-wordy. His poems are something I would expect a moody preteen to write. There are a number of "prose poems" (although, let's be honest, there's nothing poetic about them) that read more like speculative fiction. A man is run over by a train, a woman literally explodes her husband with her cooking, a man digs a tunnel to his neighbour's house...At least these are somewhat interesting despite the bland and unrefined style.
The majority of poems are repetitive and this is what pisses me off the most. First of all, his style makes use of repetition, but not in an effective way:
Secondly, certain ideas and images reappear way too often throughout this collection. How many times can one write about the sun, moon or stars "silvering" the landscape; of mortality and death; of poets and poetry; of tombs, graveyards, and cenotaphs; of mirrors; of ashes and dust? By the time I finished the book I felt like I had read a few poems that were re-written dozens of times.
The worst offender is The Monument, a forty-page yawnfest that quotes liberally from dead writers and contemplates if it's possible to create a poem that will withstand the test of time.
New Selected Poems is such a wasted opportunity. I'm not sure if Strand has a wider range of style and subject matter, but it would've been refreshing to see some variety...or at least more stringent selection criteria. Some of his poems are good but they lose their impact because they can barely distinguish themselves from the sameness of this collection. Strand offers some profound insights into what happens after death (well, okay, nothing happens, but he makes it seem profound), and his words have a way of plainly stating how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. I'm reminded of a class I took in university. The professor was discussing religion and spirituality in poetry. As the only atheist in the class, I wondered if an "atheistic spiritual" poem exists. Strand's poetry might be as close as it gets.
Poems that I liked:
"Moontan," "Eating Poetry," "The New Poetry Handbook," "Giving Myself Up," "The Prediction," "Lines for Winter," "For Jessica, My Daughter," "XVI" (from Dark Harbor), "I Will Love the Twenty-first Century," "Two de Chiricos."
=10/180* (5.6%) poems that I liked.
*parts of The Monument counted as individual poems.
I despise Strand's style, which is simplistic yet overly-wordy. His poems are something I would expect a moody preteen to write. There are a number of "prose poems" (although, let's be honest, there's nothing poetic about them) that read more like speculative fiction. A man is run over by a train, a woman literally explodes her husband with her cooking, a man digs a tunnel to his neighbour's house...At least these are somewhat interesting despite the bland and unrefined style.
The majority of poems are repetitive and this is what pisses me off the most. First of all, his style makes use of repetition, but not in an effective way:
You stood below me in a heavy coat,
the coat you are wearing.
And when you opened it, baring your chest,
white moths flew out, and whatever you said
at that moment fell quietly onto the ground,
the ground at your feet.
Snow floated down from the clouds into my ears.
The moths from your coat flew into the snow.
(from "The Man in the Tree," p.21)
Secondly, certain ideas and images reappear way too often throughout this collection. How many times can one write about the sun, moon or stars "silvering" the landscape; of mortality and death; of poets and poetry; of tombs, graveyards, and cenotaphs; of mirrors; of ashes and dust? By the time I finished the book I felt like I had read a few poems that were re-written dozens of times.
The worst offender is The Monument, a forty-page yawnfest that quotes liberally from dead writers and contemplates if it's possible to create a poem that will withstand the test of time.
New Selected Poems is such a wasted opportunity. I'm not sure if Strand has a wider range of style and subject matter, but it would've been refreshing to see some variety...or at least more stringent selection criteria. Some of his poems are good but they lose their impact because they can barely distinguish themselves from the sameness of this collection. Strand offers some profound insights into what happens after death (well, okay, nothing happens, but he makes it seem profound), and his words have a way of plainly stating how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. I'm reminded of a class I took in university. The professor was discussing religion and spirituality in poetry. As the only atheist in the class, I wondered if an "atheistic spiritual" poem exists. Strand's poetry might be as close as it gets.
Poems that I liked:
"Moontan," "Eating Poetry," "The New Poetry Handbook," "Giving Myself Up," "The Prediction," "Lines for Winter," "For Jessica, My Daughter," "XVI" (from Dark Harbor), "I Will Love the Twenty-first Century," "Two de Chiricos."
=10/180* (5.6%) poems that I liked.
*parts of The Monument counted as individual poems.
March 17, 2008
I really don't remember who recommended this one to me, the problem with having too much on your to-read list. This is the second collection of Strand poems, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. I was talking to Tessa yesterday about how sometimes a "greatest hits" is the best thing if you're not overly fond of the poet in question.
This is definitely how I feel about Strand, a poet who writes poetry that, for me at least, is just okay. There are definitely some lines I like a lot but there's just not an electric feeling that I've gotten from from some of the other poets I've read lately.
I think my favorites all came from Strand's early work, based on the copyright dates at the start of the book. "The Tunnel" is pretty typical of the early material":
"A man has been standing
in fron of my house
for days. I peek at him
from the living room
window and at night,
unable to sleep,m
I shine my flashlight
down on the lawn.
He is always here.
After awhile
I open the front door
just a crack and order
him out of my yard.
He narrows his eyes
and moans. I slam
the door and dash back
to the kitchen, then up
to the bedroom, then down.
I weep like a schoolgirl
and make obscene gestures
through the window. I
write large suicide notes
and place them so he
can read them easily.
I destroy the living
room furniture to prove
I own nothing of value.
When he seems unmoved
I decide to dig a tunnel
to a neighboring yard.
I seal the basement off
from the upstairs with
a brick wall. I dig hard
and in no time the tunnel
is done. Leaving my pick
and shovel below,
I come out in front of a house
and stand there too tired to
move or even speak, hoping
someone will help me.
I feel I'm being watched
and sometimes I hear
a man's voice,
but nothing is done
and I have been waiting for days."
This somewhat disturbed narrator dominates the early poetry, and when he leaves as the book progresses, the poems seem to drift a bit.
Perhaps the strangest section of all, however, is "The Monument", a lengthy commentary on the idea of legacy. Broken into 52 instructions to an unnamed translator, it really seemed out of place within the context of a poetry collection and probably would have been better served on its own--it appears to be new for this collection.
By the time we reach the most recent poetry, it seems as though Stern has run out of steam. The lines are very simple and the voice disappears. Still, it's well written, just not really my thing. In addition, a lot of the poetry starts getting longer and I generally prefer shorter verse.
Overall, while I don't know that I feel I need to read more Stern, there's definitely enough worthwhile here to recommend for someone else to try. (Library, 02/08)
Trebby's Take: Not for everyone, but worth a try.
This is definitely how I feel about Strand, a poet who writes poetry that, for me at least, is just okay. There are definitely some lines I like a lot but there's just not an electric feeling that I've gotten from from some of the other poets I've read lately.
I think my favorites all came from Strand's early work, based on the copyright dates at the start of the book. "The Tunnel" is pretty typical of the early material":
"A man has been standing
in fron of my house
for days. I peek at him
from the living room
window and at night,
unable to sleep,m
I shine my flashlight
down on the lawn.
He is always here.
After awhile
I open the front door
just a crack and order
him out of my yard.
He narrows his eyes
and moans. I slam
the door and dash back
to the kitchen, then up
to the bedroom, then down.
I weep like a schoolgirl
and make obscene gestures
through the window. I
write large suicide notes
and place them so he
can read them easily.
I destroy the living
room furniture to prove
I own nothing of value.
When he seems unmoved
I decide to dig a tunnel
to a neighboring yard.
I seal the basement off
from the upstairs with
a brick wall. I dig hard
and in no time the tunnel
is done. Leaving my pick
and shovel below,
I come out in front of a house
and stand there too tired to
move or even speak, hoping
someone will help me.
I feel I'm being watched
and sometimes I hear
a man's voice,
but nothing is done
and I have been waiting for days."
This somewhat disturbed narrator dominates the early poetry, and when he leaves as the book progresses, the poems seem to drift a bit.
Perhaps the strangest section of all, however, is "The Monument", a lengthy commentary on the idea of legacy. Broken into 52 instructions to an unnamed translator, it really seemed out of place within the context of a poetry collection and probably would have been better served on its own--it appears to be new for this collection.
By the time we reach the most recent poetry, it seems as though Stern has run out of steam. The lines are very simple and the voice disappears. Still, it's well written, just not really my thing. In addition, a lot of the poetry starts getting longer and I generally prefer shorter verse.
Overall, while I don't know that I feel I need to read more Stern, there's definitely enough worthwhile here to recommend for someone else to try. (Library, 02/08)
Trebby's Take: Not for everyone, but worth a try.
June 6, 2011
Loved it! I loved some of the poems more than others, of course, but overall a really fantastic collection. My favourite was the Monument, of which I'm going to reproduce a section here, but of course, an excerpt doesn't do it justice:
It has been necessary to submit to vacancy in order to begin again, to clear ground, to make space. I can allow nothing to be received. Therein lies my triumph and my mediocrity. Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is out commonness made dumb. I am passing it on. The Monument is a void, artless and everlasting. What I was I am no longer. I speak for nothing, the nothing that I am, the nothing that is this work. And you shall perpetuate me not in the name of what I was, but in the name of what I am.
It has been necessary to submit to vacancy in order to begin again, to clear ground, to make space. I can allow nothing to be received. Therein lies my triumph and my mediocrity. Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is out commonness made dumb. I am passing it on. The Monument is a void, artless and everlasting. What I was I am no longer. I speak for nothing, the nothing that I am, the nothing that is this work. And you shall perpetuate me not in the name of what I was, but in the name of what I am.
October 16, 2013
Maybe 2.5 stars overall. Some of the early poems--the stranger, more surrealistic poems, those with black humor--are quite good, and the Elegy For My Father remains powerful 40 years down the line from its creation. But that poem is the apex of Strand's career--the point at which he blends both the early surrealism and the later, more "ordinary" verse, and the point from which he descends to the level plain he has traversed ever since. There are occasional strong poems in the later work (Shooting Whales, Delirium Waltz, Elevator) but mostly the later poems are about tone, sometimes sly, mostly just sort of dreamy, abstracted and pseudo-intellectual.
September 12, 2012
Got this book over a year ago, and I've read lass than half of it. It's so rich, I can manage only a poem or two, and then I just have to let them roll around in my head for a while.
Eager to find out how the story ends, I started at the back. So far, my favorite is (probably) "Storm" — the world's most poignantly placed "as if." Although "Man and Camel" stopped me in my tracks. As well as "Nostalgia." And "Black Maps." And...
I first discovered Mark Strand when I was 16. Over 40 years later, I wish half the rest of my life had aged this well.
Eager to find out how the story ends, I started at the back. So far, my favorite is (probably) "Storm" — the world's most poignantly placed "as if." Although "Man and Camel" stopped me in my tracks. As well as "Nostalgia." And "Black Maps." And...
I first discovered Mark Strand when I was 16. Over 40 years later, I wish half the rest of my life had aged this well.
December 11, 2012
Usually, I don't read an entire book of poetry, but I had plans to go see the author give a live reading at the Folger's. Having watched his reading, I now want to read more of his work.
This book of poetry compiled some of Strand's best work from his career. I loved some of the poems and stopped to go back and reread many.
Overall, I would recommend this book to modern American poetry lovers. Potential controversies include some of the more mature themed poems, but there were only about five in the entire collection.
This book of poetry compiled some of Strand's best work from his career. I loved some of the poems and stopped to go back and reread many.
Overall, I would recommend this book to modern American poetry lovers. Potential controversies include some of the more mature themed poems, but there were only about five in the entire collection.
August 11, 2014
To me, there's something strikingly mediocre about Mark Strand's poetry, and I wonder if it simply comes from how prosaic it feels. In a sense, therein lies its genius charm.
I like tighter poets — Larkins, Eliots, and Frosts — more than I like these looser poets. I like poetry as craft — like building airplane models — rather than pure (literal) ex-pression. Some of Mark Strand's poems are very cathartic: "When the Vacation is Over" makes me swell; others tend to lose my interest. He's a very American poet, but unfortunately a poet who's not quite my cup of tea.
I like tighter poets — Larkins, Eliots, and Frosts — more than I like these looser poets. I like poetry as craft — like building airplane models — rather than pure (literal) ex-pression. Some of Mark Strand's poems are very cathartic: "When the Vacation is Over" makes me swell; others tend to lose my interest. He's a very American poet, but unfortunately a poet who's not quite my cup of tea.
November 18, 2012
I'm going to the Folgers to hear Mark Strand and decided to check him out beforehand. I loved some of the poems and actually found myself stopping to go back and reread some before handing the book off for someone else to read. Poetry is so hard for me to have an opinion on when I haven't spent much time on it. There were definitely some poems in here that I loved and some that I might like more given more time.
December 22, 2015
Mark Strand's book of New Selected Poems taught me the value there is in constantly varying structure and tone to keep the reader entertained and on their toes. I also learned that building a rich, imaginative setting for the poem can be a great, effective setup for the metaphor or message of the poem, as this is a technique Strand uses frequently in New Selected Poems.
Read
July 20, 2011Wonderful collection. Raw and passionate. The language is a bit more stripped making it less of the pretentious (but ultimately great) fare that was Blizzard of One. Overall the poems resonated with me as Strand has excellent ability to speak with an authentic voice.
Want to read
January 11, 2008This is on my wish list.
Currently reading
April 18, 2009berryman-light
February 22, 2010
Keeping up with his latest - still terrific poetry
July 28, 2010
Absolutely essential, almost 100% gold in here.
November 10, 2015
Man and Camel is fantastic. The rest are so-so, though I liked Darker as well.
March 24, 2013
It's strange--I didn't enjoy Man with Camel that much, but really enjoyed this. Maybe I've grown as a reader.
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