2nd Strand

Mark Strand...

For me, it's all about images. I read "The Story of Our Lives" in Intro to Creative Writing back in freshman year, and, while I forgot the poet, and even that it was a poem, I remembered the image I had formed of the couple in the room of their lives, flipping through the book of their lives. Now, reading "The Prediction," for instance, I again felt that what I was taking away from the poems, more than anything, was an image. There, the young woman walking, and then, at the end, somehow and no doubt a bit hazily I see the woman in the man in the woman, and the moon, etc. It's so atmospheric, but he does it with so few words!

"The Dreadful..." I'm less sure about. It's shocking, of course, and I like the moment of realizing that it's not going to be a literal poem, but in the end it's just to vague for me. I feel like he's trying to be sensationalist, but without a much greater purpose. Why is there all of this violence? What purpose is it serving, other than to shock us. This is generally my complaint with Strand. I feel it less in the other poems, but even in "The Story" there are moments where I'm not sure whether he isn't just being clever. But this is a small thought, really.

"Where Are the Waters..." was really beautiful. I think he's less typically this lyrical, so it was a pleasurable surprise. I liked taking the journey of the poem, right up until the last line, which so horribly broke with the lyrical beauty. But, I suppose, if it's read in the right voice it could be nice.

Hmmm...so it sounds like I'm most impressed with his imagery, with his power of description, and least with his philosophy. I actually think I LIKE his philosophy in many places, but it's the fact that I'm not sure he's entirely consistent, the fact that I'm not sure he's really scrutinized his poems to be certain of their truth (he seems to write for sound more than meaning?), that troubles me just a little. But only just a little. Mostly, I love how he creates these little worlds, that really do seem like oases, seem so much larger than their few lines.

Alright, well, that was NOT timely. But there will be no more such procrastination! Onward to...whom?

Mark Strand

I have some general and specific thoughts about the selection of Mark Strand's poetry, so I'll just pour a few of them out for this first entry. One of the things I really love about his work is that it is grounded in the senses but still manages to philosophize about language-- I'll only touch on the sensual aspect of his poetry in this first short entry.

A couple of things I loved: In the first poem, "Keeping Things Whole", the second stanza about the displacement of air caused by walking strikes a resonant chord within me. Last week I was walking with a friend and we did a little meditation focusing on the feeling of the air between our fingers. The sensation was intimately intense, and it felt like sharing a secret touch with the wind. So at the moment, "Keeping Things Whole" really speaks to me.

Strand has this brilliant way of turning phrase that keeps me on my toes more than many of the poets that I've been reading recently in preparation for the GRE subject test. I appreciate the way he takes classical subject matter (like a relationship gone sour) and shapes it into something innovative and new as in "Coming to This" when he refers to "the heavy industry/ of each other" and the meat sitting "in the white lake of its dish". I love that in this poem, a landscape is suggested by the depiction of a dysfunctional relationship (I imagine a landscape of coal plants, which I suppose is fitting for me to imagine, given I just read an article about the direction that Europe's energy infrastructure seems to be headed in), that the meat sitting sadly in its dish ends up being a reflection of its own bleak, dead landscape.

OK, that's all for tonight. I need some sleep, but I wanted to get going on this.