Darker Beauty

Reasons for Moving, Darker & The Sargentville Notebook: 

Poems by Mark Strand

"Now it is time, Fine Line, to use the language
that handles everything and is itself
in the same way that it is not itself."

- The Sargentville Notebook, p 53.

This collection includes Mark Strand's first two books of poetry going back to 1968. While I did not read Strand's poetry then I am glad that I became acquainted with him since then. The confessional nature of the poetry and the breathtaking images combine to form poems with the power to carry you away to the places imagined by the poet. He has been United States Poet Laureate and has taught at many different Universities over the course of his career. I found his poetic voice as expressed in these poems and the aphorisms included in this volume a reader's delight.  Here is one example from Darker:


THE DANCE


The ghost of another comes to visit and we hold
communion while the light shines.
While the light shines, what else can we do?
And who doesn't have one foot in the grave?


I notice how the trees seem shaggy with leaves
and the steam of insects engulfs them.
The light falls like an anchor through the branches.
And which one of us is not being pulled down constantly?


My mind floats in the purple air of my skull.
I see myself dancing.  I smile at everybody.
Slowly I dance out of the burning house of my head.
And who isn't borne again and again into heaven?


- Mark Strand, Darker, p 70.


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Key West and Poetry

As the days shrink and Autumn begins in the Midwest it seems a welcome respite to meditate on the poetry inspired by Key West. Warm sunny days interspersed with "tropical rain" provide nice contrast to our fading flora. Here are some excerpts from Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens and Mark Strand.



The tropical rain comes down
to freshen the tide-looped strings of fading shells:
Job's Tear, the Chinese Alphabet, the scarce Junonia,
parti-colored pectins and Ladies' Ears,
arranged as on a gray rag of rotted calico,
the buried Indian Princess's skirt;
with these the monotonous, endless, sagging coast-line
is delicately ornamented.

~ Elizabeth Bishop, "Florida"

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? We said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

~Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West"

Now you invent the boat or your flesh and set it upon the waters and drift in
the gradual swell, in the laboring salt.
Now you look down. The waters of childhood are there.

~Mark Strand, "Where are the Waters of Childhood?"

The world, the spirit, and the flesh are all present in our lives and in the poetry that inspires us.

- JH