Product Description

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 new collection, Man and Camel (2006), this book gives us an essential selection of Mark Strand’s poetry from across the entire span of his remarkable career to date.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #285993 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-13
• Released on: 2009-01-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780375711275
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Strand's 1980 Selected Poems has probably long had a home on most contemporary poetry readers' shelves. That book proclaimed Strand's status as a major poet writing in a sometimes surreal, humorous, oracular mode: If a man gives up poetry for power/ he shall have lots of power. This new volume extends that book to encompass the intervening two and a half decades and four collections of poems. From youthful masterpieces like the famous Keeping Things Whole (In a field/ I am the absence/ of field) through the haunting middle work of Darker (The future is not what it used to be./ The graves are ready. The dead/ shall inherit the dead) up to the self-conscious vignettes of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Blizzard of One (It was clear when I left the party/ That though I was over eighty I still had/ A beautiful body) and last year's Man and Camel (The wonder of their singing,/ its elusive blend of man and camel, seemed/ an ideal image for all uncommon couples), this important book offers the first panoramic view of the ongoing career of a poet who has mattered deeply to poets and readers alike. Strand's is one of the contemporary voices that will not fade. (Sept.)
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Review
“The first panoramic view of . . . a poet who has mattered deeply to poets and readers alike. Strand’s is one of the contemporary voices that will not fade.” —Publishers Weekly

“New Selected Poems is a necessary book . . . Among the best work by any living poet.” —Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker

About the Author
Mark Strand has received numerous honors and awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1990 he was named Poet Laureate of the United States. A longtime resident of Chicago, he now lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.

Customer Reviews

Young Lion in Winter
Poets and artists usually create their most significant work early in their career. Perhaps I never warmed to Strand's poetry in the past because I never had the chance to read enough of the early poems. Even his book-length poem "The Dark Harbor" didn't convince me nor his Pulitzer-winning collection "Blizzard of One". Could never figure out why he was named Poet Laureate. This New Selected Poems by Mark Strand arrives twenty-five years after his last Selected and explains everything. It is a most impressive introduction to a significant poet. The poems from the early books are typically dark and mysterious; they breathe a natural surrealism that is as different from Lorca's manner as the New World is from the Old. And this mystery is couched in short lyrics composed of short lines packed with powerful Anglo-Saxon nouns and verbs. Half-rhymes and assonance add welcome music to the atmosphere of each poem. Strand's mastery of informal formality is made to seem deceptively easy but, as any experienced poet knows, is almost impossible to teach in a poetry workshop. Here in its entirety is "The Prediction", a great poem from his third book (1970):

That night the moon drifted over the pond,
turning the water to milk, and under
the boughs of the trees, the blue trees,
a young woman walked, and for an instant

the future came to her:
rain falling on her husband's grave, rain falling
on the lawns of her children, her own mouth
filling with cold air, strangers moving into her house,

a man in her room writing a poem, the moon drifting into it,
a woman strolling under its trees, thinking of death,
thinking of him thinking of her, and the wind rising
and taking the moon and leaving the paper dark.
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Pure magic; it makes me want to break every pencil and pen in my house. There are plenty of other poems in Strand's Selected of this quality; they have that quick inevitable click that Dickinson has. Enough said.

Brilliant-and Accessible-- Poetry
Strand's most recent collection provides a compelling selection of his brilliant poetry. The poems develop a haunting sense of a world ready to crack but one that is held together by the moral and aesthetic force of Strand's imagination. Some of the poems are puzzlers; most are the kind you want to read aloud to someone near you.

Strand's Poetry
I purchased this collection of Strand's poetry after reading a review in the New Yorker Magazine which also reviewed a new release of Robert Hass's works. Strand's poems are beautiful and thought provoking. He has a way of using words that I've never experienced before. One of my favorites, "Moontan," takes me away to a distant place that rings familiar. The same would be true with "The Good Life," which make me think about how short and unpredictable life is. I would recommend this book highly to those who love poetry or to those for whom this might be their first purchase of a book of poems. Strand is one of the great American poets. Nothing quite like curling up in an over stuffed leather chair in front of a fireplace with a glass of port and reading these poems while Bach's Cello Suites play in the background.