POETRY IN REVIEW: MARK STRAND

1 6 6 Y P O E T R Y I N R E V I E W W I L L A R D S P I E G E L M A N The late Mark Strand had a voice that was always, paradoxically, unmistakable. I say ‘‘paradoxically’’ because from the start he shied away from anything flamboyant, self-revealing, or stylistically odd. His poems have always had a generic quality. Sometimes he sounds like a versifying Hemingway, chaste, matter-of-fact, but deeply sensuous: an intelligent pleasure seeker. Here is the first stanza of ‘‘Poor North’’ from the 1978 volume The Late Hour: It is cold, the snow is deep, the wind beats around in its cage of trees, clouds have the look of rags torn and soiled with use, and starlings peck at the ice. It is north, poor north. Nothing goes right. The poet humanizes the weather and the sky, even the season. Most words are monosyllables. Nature is observed and pitied. This is life. Or take ‘‘The End,’’ the last poem from The Continuous Life, C o l l e c t e d P o e m s , by Mark Strand (Knopf, 544 pp., $30) 1 6 7 R Strand’s 1990 volume, which marks the beginning of his mature, later work: Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end, Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end, Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back. When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat, When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead. When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight, Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end. The stately, melancholy tone of wonder; the orderly but not prim quatrains; the combination of anxiety and welcome with which he considers the subject of death; the straightforward diction and subtly articulated repetitions; the generalized anonymity, which every reader of Strand learns quickly is a polite way for the poet to talk about himself to himself without focusing on himself: these are the hallmarks of a Strand poem. Even the delicate domestic details – ‘‘prune the rose or caress the cat’’ – suggest the discreet hedonism that the poet always dealt in. Also the discreet musicality : notice the phrases balanced by alliteration. This is what a Strand poem sounds and looks like. Reading all the works of anyone, especially a poet, can challenge , frustrate, and fatigue as well as please even the most avid fan. Novelists can change their subjects, tell di√erent tales. Poets 1 6 8 S P I E G E L M A N Y sing the same songs in di√erent keys. Once someone has – as they say in writing classes – found ‘‘his or her voice,’’ it can become wearying in its sameness, unless interesting formal experimentation and compelling changes in subject matter, a refocusing of attention, or subtle shifts in the tone of that voice o√er evidence of artistic growth, personal transformation, a sounding of the depths or a reaching for new heights. And if a poet’s primary tones are nostalgic, an even greater threat faces the reader: how many times can we hear the same old song without feeling we have been listening to it forever? America’s three great postwar poets of nostalgia have been the late Donald Justice, Charles Wright, and Mark Strand, whose Collected Poems is, I am pleased to report, an occasion for celebration , not weariness. Strand found his voice early. He made an art out of the process of sounding tired and contented at the same time. Even in his first volume...