Mark Strand Books

This is what a book of criticism should be like! It should help people read literature more deeply, provide more background for those who haven't "studied" a writer but want to have the insights of someone who has. I've loved Mark Strand's poetry for years. NOW I know WHY I love his poetry. Buy this book first and then go back and get Mark's books. You'll fall in love with America's best poet all over again!

The best thing about the Writing Strand books is that kids will enjoy working in them. My ten year old son likes the way the book is written in a conversational way. He doesn't feel like it's a boring textbook. The material is so useful that he refers back to the techniques taught for other writing assignments.

A coffee table book sure to inspire you. This book was one of the things that really sparked my interest in nature photography. The stunning vistas and colors will capture your imagination and inspire you to travel to the beautiful places of this country!

Jorstad's photographic review of each of America's 54 national parks is an absolutely amazing look at some of the most beautiful places in our country. Jorstad visited each park several times, during different seasons. His visits enabled him to capture the light of each park, and provides the reader with incredibly nuanced and beautiful panoramas of each location. The pictures are accompanied by a lovely, lyrical text.

Overall, this book is a great investment for armchair travelers who want to experience the wonders of nature. Very highly recommended.

The quality of the reproduction of the photos in this book is terrible. A fuzzy mess. The publisher did the photographer a real disservice in reproducing his work in such a poor manner.

One of my favourite books with wonderful pictures by Stan Jorstad and intuitive texts by Mark Strand which helped me to understand more about the importance of the American National Park System and which overwhelmed me with its beauty. I was attempted to go there immediately and enjoy the pure beauty of nature again as I will surely do soon !

Panoram Photography at its absolute finest. A treasure chest of fine images that would be appreciated by both the nature lover as well as the photographer. The breath taking views of our national parks are available to us at their peak of beauty through Stan's eyes. His photography in this book, which represents ten years of devotion,provides us with beauty that very few of us would ever be able to see. Thank you Stan!

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.

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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

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.

What a book! I was reading this book to my daughter (7 years old), when she was listening the part of when Tom tried to touch the apple in Cezanne's painting and it moved, her eyes are wide open and took her breath away. (I felt that way too.) Tom kept touching his uncle's painting and finaly Renbrandt will move out from the portrait. Mark Strand's story is bizarre and thrilled. It made our heart pounded with expectation, "What's gonna happen next?" Also Red Grooms's powerful illustrations help us to get excited. This is one of the best picture books for kids 4-8. Highly recommended.

This book was one of the first times I was exposed to Red Groom's work. As a child I felt there was something special about this book and kept it in the living room with my parent's coffeetable books. Now I'm in my thrid year of art school and have a new appreciation of Red Groom's clever illustrations.

Wonderful kids' book, especially as an introduction to works of art

This book has really helped my son develop better writing skills. It is very easy to understand and the process is broken down into easy to digest pieces so it isn't overwhelming. He also appreciates the humor of the author as someone else stated =)

We haven't started the new school year yet, but I have looked through the book, and I find it to be very promising.

I reccommend this book. It helps greatly with the writing process and helps the student learn to be self motivated and assess their own writing. My student has enjoyed the sense of humor displayed by the author.

Writing Strands is well named as different models of writing are used.

well worth the cost and the time learning!

Although Dr. Bloom focuses the entire collection of criticism on two Strand collections, the insight provided therein is stellar. Bloom cuts through the chaff of criticism to get to the morsels of wisdom in all but Nicosia's ending piece--a good choice, for that final essay is excellent as the final word on Dark Harbor.

This collection of criticism on one of America's three finest living poets is long overdue. While I don't believe all of the criticism contained herein hits the mark in all cases, Jim Nicosia's final piece on Strand's magnificent long-poem Dark Harbor is a gem itself, and is alone worthy of the cost of this book. It is thoughtful and insightful and, as is Strand's poetry, serious yet joyous at the same time. Bravo.

Mark Strand works at a level that is so far above my abilities that I find myself chuckling and shaking my head at his books. As I read this, my wife kept asking if it was funny stuff. I said, no, that it was just so good it was continually surprising. Reading Strand is like walking alone though the greatest museum, where each painting is a masterpiece and speaks directly to you. I can't begin to say how good this book is.

Is Strand John Donne? Hardly. Is he Yeats? Alas, no. But he may be among the very best of living poets, and this has several poems worth re-reading.

I look for more from him of the caliber of "Keeping Things Whole." Until then, this volume is a good consolation.

Mark Strand is an incredibly talented poet--but, then, everyone already knows that...so let's focus on what people don't know--why they should by this book! This is one of the greatest small collections of poetry I have ever seen...We used it for my EH-306 Lyric Poetry class at Stetson University, and today, as I write this, Mark Strand is giving a reading/Q&A session here...If you don't believe me, do a "look-inside" on the book...you can read one or two of his poems and judge for yourself...hope this helps.

While Mark Strand is not my favorite poet, I can still see and appreciate his brilliance. The only thing about his poetry of which I can truly complain is that it does not make good reading while you are depressed. That said, if one reads and re-reads "Blizzard of One" in a more intellectual Stevens-esque mood, one must admit themself to be in the presence of a master. Strand's lines are inventive and extremely well-honed, and his work suggests the depth and complexity of a poet of the highest, or almost-highest, caliber.

Not too many people notice Strand's sense of humor, though. He read at my college in the fall of 1999 on the same night as (are you ready for this?) Donald Justice and Derek Walcott. Reading last, after Walcott read a selection from the manuscript of "Tiepolo's Hound," Strand got up and started making everyone laugh with what he read. Most of what he read was from "Blizzard of One," too. "Some Last Words" is probably the poem in this collection which best embodies that side of Strand.

I reccomend this book for anyone who loves poetry. Just be in the right mood when you read it.

As often happens, I am lead to a book of poetry by reading a poem in a magazine and then seeking out the volume in which the poem appears. Often, it takes a few years before the book appears but usually it is worth it. Certainly that is the case with this collection of poems by Mark Strand.

The poem that drew me to Strand is "A Piece of the Storm." This poem is eleven brilliant lines that, in its imagery and complexity, has incredible emotional impact. It is certainly one of the best poems I've read in the past ten years. I'm tempted to quote it in its entirely (as I do to friends) in this review but I'll resist the temptation. Consider just this one line that gives title to the book: "A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room..." Notice the juxtaposition of descriptions of the snowflake. It is a blizzard, yet it is weightless. And it is the heavy force of this snowflake that leads the poem to its emotional epiphany. Needless to say, I will be turning the lines of the poem over in my mind for years to come.

As for the rest of this slim volume, if it doesn't quite live up to the promise of "A Piece of the Storm," there is much here that is worthwhile, particularly in the first half. "Untitled," "The Next Time," "The Night, The Porch," and "Some Last Words" are all excellent. The last two sections I found much less interesting though the second part of "What It Was" is quite powerful.

There are still those of us that believe in the power of poetry and believe there are still poets writing today worth reading. Mark Strand is proof of that.

Mark Strand's poetry speaks volumes even in this thin-ish book of selected poems. It's my favorite of poetry books by living English-speaking writers. His early work reflects influences from Latin Surrealists like Octavio Paz. He moves later to the personal...autobiographical, beautiful elegies, and words on that basic thread that ties together the human experience...love. But enough of the pretentious crap on poetry that exists out there already in useless spades, on to the meat and bone of the matter, the poet's words. You be the judge. Here are some of my more favorite lines: "Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going." from "Lines for Winter" "She slept without the usual concerns, the troubling dreams--the pets moving through the museum, the carved monsters, the candles giving themselves up to darkness. She slept without caring what she looked like, without considering the woman who would come or the men who would leave or the mirrors or the basin of cold water." from "She" "Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry...She does not understand. When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams. I am a new man. I snarl at her and bark. I romp with joy in the bookish dark." from "Eating Poetry" and finally "The meek are hauling their skins into heaven. The hopeless are suffering the cold with those who have nothing to hide...There are stones in the sea no one has seen. There is a shore and people are waiting. And nothing comes back. Because it is over. Because there is silence instead of a name. Because it is winter and the new year." from "Elegy for my Father"

strand's poetry has a surrealistic, ethereal feel to it. while you won't find many great poems here (but do read "The Tunnel"), you will find a lot of interesting, solid poems that make it a worthy collection to read.

Mark Strand is an excellent contemporary poet. Some poems leave the reader smiling, such as in "The New Poetry Handbook." An excerpt reads, "If a man publicly denounces poetry, / his shoes will fill with urine." Even within this one poem, the reader changes from a laugh to a stunned silence, from the last line in the poem, "If a man finishes a poem, / he shall bathe in the blank wake of his passion / and be kissed by white paper."

Strand uses language to purely, succintly, metaphorically, lyrically, and beautifully describe every day life: marriage, writing, love, home, and death.

BUY THIS BOOK!

I know a lot of people who love Mark Strand, & I know he has done a lot of work for poetry, but he really doesn't seem to me like he's a special poet, hype aside. I read a lot of poems in this book waiting for them to go somewhere, for Strand to find inspiration, but it never happened. The poems have a foot nailed to the ground & like it that way, so they can just sit there while other things do stuff. There are a few good poems, but anyone who writes a lot of poems writes a few that are good. If this is the kind of writing you want, maybe you would appreciate this guy, but there are so many poets of comparable aesthetic who do it so much better.

This collection proves Mark Strand to be one of the most amazing, talented contemporary poets. Easy for a poetry beginner to appreciate and understand, yet complex enough for the biggest poetry buff to love, this book made me think over and over again about the thoughts Strand so elegantly examines. I had the luck to be able to see Strand read, and his wit and grace impressed me almost as much as his work does. If you are interested in reading contemporary poetry, or already love the likes of Simic, Tate, Wright, Ashbery, etc, pick up this book and let Stand's magic take you away.

We homeschool and this is a good addition to our curriculum. This book gives direct assignments to help my kids become more aware of how well they and others communicate. I see positive results already.

Interesting exercises but better for a classroom setting. We homeschool and it can be difficult to follow through with some of the assignments. Overall, a good buy.

This book has some great information on how a person can interract with others successfully. Indeed, I found some useful information on how to be a better listener, and how to communicate more effectively. This book is good, as it is like your child taking private lessons from a lively, well spoken teacher. These are things that come better, I feel, from a hip teacher than from mom and dad. Try it out, especially if you can get it at a discount. It's a great addition to your curriculum, and doesn't have to be regimented. Assign lessons as you see fit. Each lesson can stand alone, as I read it.