Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Enlarged for the UK edition to include 11 poems
Former Poet Laureate of the United States
Winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Prize and Rockerfeller Foundation Award
"This wonderful, varied new collection ... shows a wit reminiscent of John Ashbery - private, hard to pin down, addicted to deferrals and dying falls. If there is something scandalous in Strand's gorgeous, unabashed nostalgia or erotic melancholy, the scandal is how inescapable these modes remain, for us and for one of our most enjoyable poets." - Publishers' Weekly
from Blizzard of One
BLACK SEA
One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of tyhe house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on the lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear
...
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here?
Mark Strand is one of America's finest poets. He has been a recipient of the Bollinger Prize, the Bobbit Prize, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Edgar Allen Poe Prize, a Rockerfeller Foundation Award, and the Wallace Stevens Prize, as well as fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the MacArthur Foundation and the Ingram Merril Foundation. He has served as Poet Laureate of the United States.
Enlarged for the UK edition to include 11 poems
Former Poet Laureate of the United States
Winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Prize and Rockerfeller Foundation Award
"This wonderful, varied new collection ... shows a wit reminiscent of John Ashbery - private, hard to pin down, addicted to deferrals and dying falls. If there is something scandalous in Strand's gorgeous, unabashed nostalgia or erotic melancholy, the scandal is how inescapable these modes remain, for us and for one of our most enjoyable poets." - Publishers' Weekly
from Blizzard of One
BLACK SEA
One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of tyhe house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on the lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear
...
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here?
Mark Strand is one of America's finest poets. He has been a recipient of the Bollinger Prize, the Bobbit Prize, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Edgar Allen Poe Prize, a Rockerfeller Foundation Award, and the Wallace Stevens Prize, as well as fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the MacArthur Foundation and the Ingram Merril Foundation. He has served as Poet Laureate of the United States.