Mark strand

So the poet I decided to do this on is Mark Strand. He was born in Canada in 1934 and grew up in different places in the United States. He studied at several universities including Antioch Ohio college, Yale, also the University of Florence on a Fulbright fellowship where he studied 19th century Italian poetry. When he was a child, he actually wasn’t considered bright. He was a painter while studying at Yale, and a lot of people say that he creates a “painterly’ image in his poetry because of the way he closely examines things.

I found it really interesting that in an interview he said that he wasn’t good with language as a child, and so the idea that he would one day become a poet would come as a huge shock for his family growing up. Strand felt deeply connected with the painter Edward Hopper. He wrote a book about his works, explaining the paintings in very expressive details. Strand definitely has a way of showing his passion for both art and poetry and combining the two.

Hopper was considered a very misunderstood, realist painter and Strand said that he eally connected with his “strangeness” and feels influenced by it. Strand’s poetry has a very simple language to it. It sometimes borders on something beyond reality, in the way that he perceives the world. He wrote a lot of poems about dreams and disassociation from the world. He’s written 14 books of poetry. He also writes a lot of life and death. Death, being what he considers the main point in lyrical poetry. What I really connect with Is the rhythm of this poem first of all.

I actually enjoyed a ot of other poems by Strand but after we looked at Fishing on the susehanna river by Billy Collins, this intrigued me because it reminded me of that similar rhythm. I enjoy the repetition that things will always end but then continue to go on and return again. Theres this sadness in the earlier stanzas about how things Just stay the same, leave and come back again. The hopelessness of a mundane world. In the end theres kind of a positive hopefulness where the people at the party don’t think the night will end. They don’t let it though the music stops. mark strand By Idramaqueenl