Article
Mark Strand, 11 April 1934 – 29 November 2014
'I still had a beautiful body'
December 11, 2014
In the past, another Mark Strand would come to the rescue and get the job done. But where was he now? Perhaps because he gets no credit for what he does, except privately from me, he decided not to show up, leaving me, the lazy, everyday Strand, to face the music alone.
We’re glad for the ‘lazy, everday’ Strand that we got; ‘Poetry in the world’ shows us that letting ourselves ‘face the music’ is, in fact, the crucial thing. Appropriately, his is that rare kind of contemporary poetry that neither asks for nor requires a ‘defense’, as reading it ‘seems itself a kind/ of happiness, as if that plain fact were enough and would last’.
In memoriam, we’ve added to three of Strand’s poems – ‘Old Man Leaves Party’, ‘The View’ and ‘Our Masterpiece Is the Private Life’ – alongside their audio recordings and Dutch translations created for the 2001 Festival to his existing Poetry International page. Note: ‘Old Man Leaves Party’, ‘The View’, and ‘Our Masterpiece is the Private Life’ from Blizzard of One: Poems by Mark Strand, copyright © 1998 by Mark Strand. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Mark Strand, born in Canada and raised and educated in the United States and South America, “was recognized as one of the premier American poets of his generation as well as an accomplished editor, translator, and prose writer,” writes our partner, the Poetry Foundation. In addition to serving as the U.S. Poet Laureate between 1990-1991, Strand was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for his collection Blizzard of One. He died on 29 November 2014 in New York.
A participant of the 2001 Poetry International Festival, Strand recorded several of his poems for us and gave a talk called ‘Poetry in the world’, a telling modification of our original prompt, which asked for his ‘defense of poetry.’ Instead of sweeping statements about poetry’s universality, Strand proffers a particularized and personal account – structured as a sort of picaresque – of how he went about considering and writing his talk. Fritos, a pot roast, the new Chandra telescope and a student named Dick, along with his girlfriend Jane, all make appearances, and Strand observes:In the past, another Mark Strand would come to the rescue and get the job done. But where was he now? Perhaps because he gets no credit for what he does, except privately from me, he decided not to show up, leaving me, the lazy, everyday Strand, to face the music alone.
We’re glad for the ‘lazy, everday’ Strand that we got; ‘Poetry in the world’ shows us that letting ourselves ‘face the music’ is, in fact, the crucial thing. Appropriately, his is that rare kind of contemporary poetry that neither asks for nor requires a ‘defense’, as reading it ‘seems itself a kind/ of happiness, as if that plain fact were enough and would last’.
In memoriam, we’ve added to three of Strand’s poems – ‘Old Man Leaves Party’, ‘The View’ and ‘Our Masterpiece Is the Private Life’ – alongside their audio recordings and Dutch translations created for the 2001 Festival to his existing Poetry International page. Note: ‘Old Man Leaves Party’, ‘The View’, and ‘Our Masterpiece is the Private Life’ from Blizzard of One: Poems by Mark Strand, copyright © 1998 by Mark Strand. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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