Mark Strand

Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 - November 29, 2014) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, essayist, academic, and translator.

Mark Strand (1934-2014) in 2012. Photo by Slowking. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Youth and education

Strand was born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Much of his adolescence was spent in South and Central America.

In 1957, he earned a B.A. from Antioch College in Ohio. Strand then studied painting under Josef Albers at Yale University where he earned a B.F.A in 1959. On a Fulbright Scholarship, Strand studied 19th-century Italian poetry in Italy during 1960-1961.

He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa the following year and earned a Master of Arts in 1962. In 1965 he spent a year in Brazil as a Fulbright Lecturer.

Academic career

His academic career has taken him to numerous colleges and universities to teach. A partial list:

• University of Iowa, Iowa City, instructor in English, 1962–1965
• University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Fulbright lecturer, 1965–1966
• Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, assistant professor, 1967
• Columbia University, New York City, adjunct associate professor, 1969–1972
• Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, New York City, associate professor, 1970–1972
• Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Bain-Swiggett Lecturer, 1973
• Brandeis University, Hurst professor of poetry, 1974–1975
• University of Utah, Salt Lake City, professor of English, 1981–1993
• Johns Hopkins University, Elliot Coleman Professor of Poetry, 1994-c. 1998
• University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, 1998—

Visiting professor at

• University of Washington, 1968, 1970
• Columbia University, 1980
• Yale University, 1969–1970
• University of Virginia, 1976, 1978
• California State University at Fresno, 1977
• University of California at Irvine, 1979
• Wesleyan University, 1979
• Harvard University, 1980

In 1997, he left Johns Hopkins University to accept the Andrew MacLeish distinguished service professorship of social thought at the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago.

From 2005 to his death, Strand taught literature and creative writing at Columbia University, in New York City.

Strand died of liposarcoma on November 29, 2014, in Brooklyn, New York.

Writing

Many of Strand's poems are nostalgic in tone, evoking the bays, fields, boats, and pines of his childhood on Prince Edward Island. Strand has been compared to Robert Bly in his use of surrealism, though he attributes the surreal elements in his poems to an admiration of the works of Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, and Rene Magritte. Strand's poems use plain and concrete language, usually without rhyme or meter. In a 1971 interview, Strand said, "I feel very much a part of a new international style that has a lot to do with plainness of diction, a certain reliance on surrealist techniques, and a strong narrative element."

Recognition

In 1981, Strand was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990, and served until 1991.

Strand has received numerous other awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987 and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1999 for Blizzard of One.

Awards

• 1960–1961: Fulbright Fellowship
• 1979: Fellowship, Academy of American Poets
• 1981: Fellowship, American Academy of Arts and Letters.
• 1987: MacArthur Fellowship
• 1990–1991: Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
• 1992: Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry
• 1993: Bollingen Prize
• 1999: Pulitzer Prize in Poetry , for Blizzard of One
• 2004: Wallace Stevens Award

Publications

Poetry

• Sleeping with One Eye Open. Stone Wall Press, 1964.
• Reasons for Moving: Poems. New York:Atheneum, 1968.
• Darker: Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1970.
• The Story of Our Lives. New York: Atheneum, 1973.
• The Sargeantville Notebook. Providence, RI: Burning Deck, 1974.
• Elegy for My Father. Windhover, 1978.
• The Late Hour. New York: Atheneum, 1978.
• Selected Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1980.
• The Continuous Life. New York: Knopf, 1990.
• The Monument. New York: Ecco, 1991.
• Reasons for Moving, Darker, and the Sargeantville Notebook.New York: Knopf, 1992.
• Dark Harbor: A poem. New York: Knopf, 1993.
• Blizzard of One: Poems. Knopf, 1998.
• 89 Clouds (long poem; with monotypes by Wendy Mark; introduction by Thomas Hoving). New York: ACA Galleries, 1999.
• Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More (illustrated by Strand). New York: Turtle Point Press, 2000.
• Man and Camel. New York: Knopf, 2005.
• New Selected Poems. New York: Knopf, 2007.
• Collected Poems. New York: Knopf, 2014.

Short fiction

• Mr. and Mrs. Baby, and other stories. New York: Knopf, 1985.

Non-fiction

• The Monument. New York: Ecco, 1978.
• William Bailey (art criticism). Abrams, 1987.
• Hopper (art criticism). New York: Ecco, 1994.
• The Weather of Words: Poetic invention. New York: Knopf, 2000.

Juvenile

• The Planet of Lost Things (illustrated by William Pene du Bois). C.N. Potter, 1982.
• The Night Book (illustrated by Pene du Bois). New York: C.N. Potter, 1983.
• Rembrandt Takes a Walk (illustrated by Red Grooms). New York: C.N. Potter, 1986.

Translated

• 18 Poems from the Quechua (edited & translated). Halty Ferguson, 1971.
• Rafael Alberti, The Owl's Insomnia (edited & translated). New York: Atheneum, 1973.
• Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Souvenir of the Ancient World. Antaeus Editions, 1976.
• Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Traveling in the Family (edited with Thomas Colchie; translated with Elizabeth Bishop, Colchie, & Gregory Rabassa). New York: Random House, 1987.
• Looking for Poetry: Poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Rafael Alberti, with Songs from the Quechua. New York: Knopf, 2002.

Edited

• The Contemporary American Poets. New York: New American Library, 1968.
• New Poetry of Mexico. New York: Dutton, 1970.
• Another Republic: Seventeen European and South American writers (edited with Charles Simic). New York: Ecco, 1976.
• The Art of the Real: Nine American figurative painters. New York: C.N. Potter, 1983.
• The Best American Poetry, 1991 (edited with David Lehman). New York: Macmillan, 1991.
• Golden Ecco Anthology. New York: Ecco Press, 1994.
• The Making of a Poem: A Norton anthology of poetic forms. New York: Norton, 2000.
• 100 Great Poems of the Twentieth Century. New York: Norton, 2005.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Audio / video

Mark Strand Reads "The Great Poet Returns"

• Mark Strand Reading (CD). Aspen, CO: Aspen Writers' Foundation, 1983.
• Mark Strand (cassette). New York: Academy of American Poets, [199-]
• The Making of a Poem: A Norton anthology of poetic forms (CD). Princeton, NJ: Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, 2006.
• 100 Great Poems of the 20th Century (audiobook). Princeton, NJ: Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, 2007.

  

  Mark Strand reads "The Couple"

Except where noted, discographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

References

• Perkins, George and Barbara Perkins, Ed. (1988) Contemporary American Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill

External links

Poems

• Mark Strand 3 poems at Poems and Pickaxes
• Mark Strand profile & 8 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Mark Strand b. 1934 at the Poetry Foundation
• Mark Strand at PoemHunter (30 poems)

Prose

• "Poetry in the World" at Blackbird

Audio/video

• Mark Strand (b. 1934) at The Poetry Archive
• Mark Strand at YouTube
• Mark Strand reading at the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar (audio / 33:53)
• The Couple," Erotikon Symposium, University of Chicago]
• Sleeping with One Eye Open", poem and interview on Weekend America
• Mark Strand at YouTube

Books

• Mark Strand at Amazon.com

About

• Mark Strand in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Mark Strand at NNDB.
• Mark Strand (1934- ) at Modern American Poetry.
• Wallace Shawn (Fall 1998). "Mark Strand, The Art of Poetry No. 77". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1070/the-art-of-poetry-no-77-mark-strand. 
• Ernest Hilbert Interview with Mark Strand for Random House on the Publication of Blizzard of One and The Weather of Words
• 'Mark Strand's Words and Weather', review of New Selected Poems in the Oxonian Review