Collected Poems

One night, I found myself reading a lot of Mark Strand poetry—though I still wasn’t even halfway through his 500-page Collected Poems. I was dead tired, my eyes were shot, my back ached, but I was absolutely driven to read more. Though I had recently read Louise Glück’s huge book of poetry (Poems 1962-2012) and it had been a great experience, Mark Strand’s poetry is more up my street with his oddness and style. My appreciation for poetry has always been strong, but it is sky-high recently. Reading and wandering around in these huge books by Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning poets is simply surreal and otherworldly at times. Last night, I was already feeling rather emotional, and I was shaken, amused, and drawn in so many show more directions, from so many poems.

Some of Mark Strand poems go on for pages and pages, but they were working for me in the dark of night. Sometimes, I was stunned and amazed with just a single line, a stanza, or a complete poem. It was one of my favorite and most intense experiences reading poetry by myself ever. Though I was marking the outstanding parts, I still had such a desire to read them to, and share them with my late wife. We were constantly sharing what impressed us in the books we were reading—that was our life together.

Strand wrote a beautiful long poem that was about life being a book, “The Story of Our Lives.” It’s about reading that book, but the line between what’s on the page and what’s actual living is intriguingly unexplained and unexplainable. I was rereading parts over and over for some time. I certainly applied the poem’s premise to my own life, as a vast amount of my life is absorbed by reading and writing the word, and sharing that life. The question of whether we’re living or reading, and of whether we can control any or all of our existence was a great place to be left pondering in the night.

All his thoughts got me to thinking in so many directions that I could never have remembered or recorded half of them. Mark Strand’s poetry is mostly very tight to my own feelings and I’m very grateful for experiencing such a strong connection there … and I can return there again whenever I pick this volume up again.
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It's always interesting to have a collection that spans a poet's lifetime of work. While I didn't connect with most of it (for me, the clever, witty language seemed a screen that often blocked that connection instead of being a conduit), Strand was clearly an important poet, worthy of our attempted attention.

The ever astonishing Mark Strand.