"Tourist On Planet Earth" Talks To Seattleites Tonight
A Poem Collected From Press Materials
on the Topic of Mark Strand
Being Tonight's Poet
in the Seattle Arts & Lectures Series
at Intiman Theatre, 7:30pm, Tickets $20/$10 Students and Under 25
“Mark Strand has chosen the negative path,
with loss as the first step towards fullness:
it is also the opening
to a transparent verbal perfection,"
murmurs Octavio Paz.
“I seem to be a tourist on planet Earth,”
Strand has said -- born on Prince Edward Island
in 1934. He spent his childhood in cities
across Canada, the United States,
and South America.
His salesman father followed work.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Strand,
father of Jessica and Thomas, has
feelings of displacement, of floating,
of existential travel,
and twelve collections of poetry,
including Blizzard of One (1999) and,
most recently Man and Camel (2006).
They explore selfhood and mortality
with precise language
and surreal imagery.
He is “a poet of mood,
of integrated fragments,
of twilit landscape, and of longing,”
praised Henri Cole in Poetry.
(We no longer subscribe.)
Strand also writes
children’s books, art criticism
(he is particularly interested in Edward Hopper),
translates poetry; and teaches
at Columbia University.
Mail emblazoned with “Rockefeller,” “Fulbright,”
“Guggenheim,” “MacArthur,” and “Bollingen”
arrives at his New York City residence.
In 1990, he was chosen
Poet Laureate of the United States.
“Strand’s poems resonate
with a shimmering sense
of the infinite," say the New York Times.
(We no longer subscribe.)
