Mark Strand Books

Mr. Strand writes poems that are brief and books that are brief. What Mr. Strand lacks in length, however, he makes up for in power. "A Piece of the Storm," an eleven line work from his last collection, Blizzard of One, is one of the best poems of the last 10 years. I was hoping to find something of that level in this collection and I did.

"2002" is another top tier poem. It is a meditation on death but with a twist. It begins: "I am not thinking of Death, but Death is thinking of me./He leans back in his chair, rubs his hands, strokes/his beard, and says, `I'm thinking of Strand...'". Normally, I find a poet using his own name in a poem incredibly narcissistic, but here it gives grounding to a poem of fantasy. Plus, it seems to invite the reader to substitute their own name. From there, the poem follows Death's thoughts until it reaches this chilling closing: "...O let it be soon. Let it be soon." I love it.

As is often the case, even with poets I enjoy, the rest of the book is uneven. There are some other jewels here, including "Mother and Son" and "Poem After the Seven Last Words," a sequence of stanzas built around the last words of Christ on the Cross. What I like about this poem is how there is a subtlety and universality about it. Still, some of the poems are quite poor, including "2032," the companion to "2002." But I am will to work my way through some poems I don't like to find something like "2002."

This was my first experience reading a full collection by Mark Strand but I am very impressed, which shouldn't be surprising giving the awards and honors that Strand has received.

To me, this collection is full of poems that are the narrator trying to find his place in the world. There are many poems that look into what it is to be a writer, but that is not the only place in the world that the narrator is looking for.

What I note the most in these poems, as a poet, is the great use of dialogue and strong use of the actual line.

This collection could have a wide audience and hope many will consider reading it!.

The best poems teem with humor, moments of wonder, mystery, and sublime beauty; and one piece -- "Poem after the seven last words" -- can only be described as a work of genius. While some of the poems contained in "Man and Camel" come up short, there are others -- such as "Mirror" -- that are truly exceptional. The book as a whole is not quiet the masterpiece that is "Blizzard of One," but in its finest moments it is certainly the Pulitzer Prize winners' equal, and might even be better. In the best pieces there is an economy at work in the words, a sparseness and deceptive simplicity. Everything is deliberate, nothing unconsidered. There is also a purposeful ambiguity. The intent of these poems is not to answer or explain but to invoke, astonish, and confront with undeniable beauty and grief.

This is the eleventh poetry collection by Mark Strand and provides light masterpieces of spiritual meditations and social conditions. Poems are all free verse and vary immensely in theme and approach - but all are hard-hitting comments: "Something was wrong/screams could be heard/in the morning dark/it was cold." Mark Strand's reflections always make you think: MAN AND CAMEL is no exception.

Strand is a magnificent poet. His ideas and images are brilliant and the arrangement of the poems makes one flow into the other and it is impossible to stop reading. Tight and concise, lyrical and thought provoking, interesting and entertaining. He won a well-deserved Pulitzer a few years ago, and these poems are additional evidence as to why.

Favorites include "Black Sea," "Marsyas," "Mother and Son," and "Mirror."

I agree with the earlier homeschooling moms , this is a fun easy to use program. My reluctant 12 year old just finished book 3 (it took 2 years as we spread it out to his pace)and now he has written his own mini adventure series. The wrkbk is geared toward the child, it encourages independance and works in very small steps (strands) toward a goal. This made it much easier for my son who will begin book 4 and my DD begins book 2 this fall.
Have fun learning!!

I homeschool my three children (ages 5,9,11) and am always looking for academically rigourous texts that are fun too. It's difficult to find curricula that fulfill both requirements, but this series does. Clear instruction focuses on an incremental approach to improving writing skills. My kids have learned (and continue to learn in level 4) how to use language with clarity, write to interest readers, organize information, write vivid descriptions. When so much out there is fluff (memorizing grammar rules, making kids worry more about how neat their handwriting is than how clear their thinking is), books like Writing Strands make me remember why I homeschool.

I am a home schooling mom and I am really enjoying using this
book. My son is in 4th grade this year and the best part is...
he can read it himself and do the assignments. The book is written to the student. It is serious and yet the author makes it very personnel to the student. I have not done a lot in it yet. My son seems to like it and is learning. THat's What I want. I recommend you buy Evaluating Writing to go with it. It's
like the teachers manual in evaluating your child's writing unless you already are good in English yourself.

Starting homeschooling this year, I was daunted by the choices of curriculum. Our son (3rd grade) has never enjoyed writing and didn't do much of it in traditional school.

We both like this curriculum. The author "speaks" directly to the student and is quite funny, so it makes writing fun. We're only a few months into homeschooling, but my son is quite proud of everything he's written so far.

I know the author discourages the use of exclamation points, but this book series deserves one. We only homeschooled for one year but I still bought all the books with the intent to use them to improve my own writing skills. They are that good. I highly recommend them for both homeschool and self-improvement.

At the very least, Mark Strand is one of the most readable poets around. He's neither too obscure nor too obvious, and if his example were more widely followed then contemporary poetry might find a sizable audience. The poem "The Continuous Life" says everything that needs saying about the joys, hopes, fears, tensions, and emptiness of middle-class existence--or perhaps just plain human existence--and note how well the cascading rhythm matches its theme. It reminded me of James Salter's novel "Light Years," but Strand manages to compress his vision into a mere 28 lines. As an observer of the human comedy, he's quite perceptive.

My only major complaint with this volume is the somewhat repetitive subject matter--there is too much musing about the Nature of Art, too many descriptions of verdant scenery. Considering this was his first volume of original poetry in at least 10 years, we could have reasonably expected a little more variety. Or perhaps I'm being churlish. Don't let me discourage you: read this book.

I highly recommend these poems! Experts will have their reasons for loving Strand. As for myself, I find them accessible, moving, musical, visual, and just flat out great to read. Forget "what they mean," this guy can write. But then, I also find them edifying in the same way that Ecclesiastes is edifying. Good stuff.

I gave this book the desert isle test; would I want it on a desert island if my library were limited to 100 American poetry books from 1990 and since. The answer is yes, this is Strand's best, it honors beauty as only the most refined aesthete could do. In these pages you will find Strand's quivalents [my equivocal way of saying `equivalents'] to "Ode on Melancholy" and Stevens's "Sunday Morning" and "Comedian as the Letter C." In a word, this is an elegant volume, as elegant as it is romantic.

You can count the great american poets who are writing today on a thumbless hand with mark strand as the palm. The poem "The Continuous Life" has been refered to as the perfect poem and I've asked my grandchildren to read the final poem in the volume "The End" at my graveside. We need poetry as a people and as individuals and if you have the nature to hear and feel it,poetry is the only truth there is.

My interest in this biography was piqued by my mounting scepticism of the claims of early 20th century modernist artists and their promoters, whether critics, collectors or curators. Much of what we think we know about early American modernism is little more than oft repeated hand-me-down information that manifests the bearer's uncritical satisfaction with the modernist enterprise. Such information serves to maintain the artist's place in the modernist temple that subsequent enthusiasts and fans have constructed and served as keepers of the flame. Critical, layered and thorough historical study reveals such notions as ideology, mere mythologizing constructs.

Readers of Ms. Lowe's exceptionally well written biography will find a fair and balanced AND critically engaged account of an adequately talented photographer who was one of the principal apologists of modernist ideas in New York, with a reputation in Europe as well. With his small enclosed (are modernist gatherings ever open?) circle of artists and holding court in his galleries, Alfred Stieglitz combatively denounced skeptical visitors who didn't or wouldn't "get it." This was was the Stieglitzian modernist "my way or the highway" pronouncement which cowed fawning acolytes.

A vorcious AND impressionable reader, he embraced Freudian ideas subsequently discredited in the later 20th century. Believing in the "pure artist untainted by commerce,Stieglitz turned against his young associate Edward Steichen when the latter became successful as an artistic commercial photographer (his career was also characterized by attracting the public; Stieglitz's publications always shed their subscribers who got fed-up with his sermonizing enthusiasms that strayed from photographic matters) Mind you, Steichen accomplished a multi-faceted career without "daddy's money," with which Stieglitz was bankrolled for much of his bohemian life (danke, PaPa!). He seems to also have been his mother's favorite.

Among the book's strong sections are its coverage of the regular gatherings of the Stieglitz clan at the family's summer house in upstate New York. Here family dynamics were played out that revealingly throw Stieglitz's personality into contrast with those of his siblings, friends and younger lover Georgia O'Keefe (one of the more over-rated American artists of the 20th century) who also shared his inflexible termperament.

The author, who spent years meticulously researching available archives (some still remain sealed), has produced a fully-orbed account of the glories and contradictions of an archetypal American modernist. It is a definitive study of Steiglitz and his personal world.

This is an excellent biography. Written by Sue Davidson Lowe, Alfred Stieglitz's niece, "Stieglitz : A Memoir/Biography" is written objectively, yet with the knowingness and acceptance of a relative. This book presents a well-balanced picture of Stieglitz, his accomplishments (not only his own artistic endeavors, but his efforts to make photography an accepted art form), friends, family, and life. When I was done reading this biography, I felt that I had been presented with a coherent, entertaining, and candid portrayal of Stieglitz. I have read many biographies and autobiographies, of these, I have felt that about one-fourth are well-written and worth reading -- this Stieglitz biography is one of them.

Mark Strand does not just comment on the paintings, but rather interprets them with great insight. The book is a beautifully understated combination of elegant prose and revelations about Hopper's art.

If I could have afforded the BIG Hopper book I would have bought that one, but maybe, in the end, it was better this way. This great, though moderately sized, collection of the work of American artist Edward Hopper focuses on the most well-known of his paintings and etchings. The Automat, New York Movie, Drugstore, Night Wind, and, of course, the ever-present Nighthawks are all there. And even though I've looked at these paintings, or reproductions of them, hundreds of times, they never loose their intensity for me. They lead me constantly back to revelation; of my self, of my culture, of my country. There is something about the sarkness, the isolation, and the grandeur of Hopper's work that is completely moving and, I would say, completely American. (Unfortunately a 1000 word book review isn't the place to go into that. You'll just have to trust me.) Of added interest in this particular book of Hopper's work is a meaty biography, timeline, and criticism of his work. So, a nice overview of Hopper's life and art that's perhaps just as satisfying but WAY WAY cheaper than the BIG Hopper book.

A reader's delight, photographer Nancy Crampton has captured the faces (and personalities) of over one hundred of our most prominent writers and poets in this outstanding monograph. Following an introduction of elegant simplicity by Mark Strand, Crampton presents a seamless flow of the artists whose words have filled our eyes and minds, but somehow have eluded our visual images of the creators. While most books by the subjects surveyed include a 'jacket photo', those semblances are usually posed and formal and tell us little about the writer.

Crampton goes 'into the wild' and captures her subjects in studios, out of doors, in public places - any place she finds conducive to the comfort of the subject. These magnificent duotones are not only technically superb as photographic portraits; they convey much of the 'mystery' of the artists. WH Auden is captured in closeup taking a drag on his ubiquitous cigarette; James Baldwin in his white djellaba gazes straight into our eyes from France; Eudora Welty sits graciously in her overstuffed armchair in Jackson, Mississippi; Gabriel Garcia Marquez smiles, eye glasses in hand, in Mexico City; John Cheever sits in solitude but for his dog on the steps in New York; and Susan Sontag, Jorge Luis Borges, Anne Sexton, Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Maurice Sendak, Joseph Brodsky, Lorrie Moore, Tom Stoppard, Chinua Achebe, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Franzen - the list seems endless - all give Crampton their moment of cooperation.

This is a valuable addition to the library of every avid reader. Meet the faces and images of your favorite writers, be challenged by faces you may not know, and enjoy this captured bit of literary history. Very Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, September 05

"Writers" is a stunning collection of two-page spreads featuring 104 of our treasured authors, poets and playwrights. The right-hand side of each smooth, heavy page presents Nancy Crampton's arresting photo of a writer -- each photograph communicating far beyond the requisite thousand words.

But then, on each left-hand page, there ARE words: a paragraph or three from the writer about an aspect of their inspiration, their writing philosophy or their life. And tucked in the matter at the back of the book is Nancy's Afterword -- her notes on the backstory of several of the photographs -- which made me flip back through the pages to revisit those images with new insight ... and then all the images, again.

Absolutely lovely!

This book is the best anthology for any beginning poet. It pays homage to poetry's past, while honoring its future. Anyone interested in poetry written just before it bumped against technology and computers will find this a fascinating and necessary book. Great language from a great time in American history.

received the book on time. it was in good and new condition exactly as stated.

Far more than just about Hopper and his paintings. Strand uses the paintings -- and the emotional effects carried out as a result of their geometry -- as a case study in how an artist uses negative space and suggestion to create pathos. If I were teaching creative writing, or any kind of creative art, I would have my students read and re-read this book.

You have the money, you have the time to read (although you probably don't take advantage of that time) so why not buy this book.

Mark Strand's Mr and Mrs Baby is one of the best collections of contemporary fiction of our time. Stories like "A Dog's Life" and "True Loves" will challenge the standard conventions which we cling to in our daily life.

Cutting wit, piercing irony and beautiful writing characterize this masterpiece.