Mark Strand

Author's Note - The Poem on the top is called "Lines for Winter" by Mark Strand.  I tried to write it with the same number of syllybuls in each line as his original poem, but my main goal was to make a poem that captures the meaning of the first poem.  The meaning of this first poem is that there is that you push through every day and make the next better.  That nothing can stop you and done drone on the bad in life, but rather push through and make every moment worth while.  Make every moment better than the last and that when you die, you will not regret anything because what you did in life, was all with a meaning and all part of a great life.  I hope you enjoy my poem.

Lines for Winter

Tell yourself

as it gets cold and gray falls from the air

that you will go on

walking, hearing

the same tune no matter where

you find yourself --

inside the dome of dark

or under the cracking white

of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself

what you know which is nothing

but the tune your bones play

as you keep going. And you will be able

for once to lie down under the small fire

of winter stars.

And if it happens that you cannot

go on or turn back and you find yourself

where you will be at the end,

tell yourself

in that final flowing of cold through your limbs

that you love what you are.

The Flickering Light




Look at life

As everything dies in the dark night

That you will not go

Rather move on

And keep following your heart

Where it takes you

And keep moving forward

and that you don’t look backward

But rather look forward to the next minute

And make the next moment

Worth much more

And make this moment greater

Than the moment before

And keep that in your memory and use that

As motivation for your next bad moment

And keep moving

And if you cannot keep moving on

You just turn back and realize that

As you look back, you are great,

And stop

For the last bit that rushes through your great heart

You always loved your life

Born on April 11th, 1934 in Prince Edward Island in Canada

When Strand was 4, he moved with his family to the United States and spent most of his childhood in New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.

As a teenager, he lived in Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, most of the traveling due to his father's profession as a salesman.

While he was growing up, Strand’s mother said he would become a painter. His parents encouraged him to create art, hoping it would not distract him from a more stable career.

He received his Batchlor in Art's  from Antioch College in Ohio in 1957

He also attended Yale College where he got the Cook Prize and the Bergin Prize.

He received his Bachlor in Fine Art's Degree in 1959 and his Master's in Arts degree in 1962

Noticed as a Premiere Contemporary American Poets

Some of his poems include Man and Camel, Dark Harbor, The Continuous Life, Selected Poems, The Story of Our Lives, Reason's for Moving, and Blizzard of One which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998

He has been the recipient of Fellowships from the Ingram Merrill, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim Foundations and from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been awarded the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (1979), a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (1987), the Bollingen Prize (1993), and has served as Poet Laureate of the United States (1990).  He also won The Gold Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2009.

Mark Strand use to be the chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

He currently teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

Stand's Writing Styles -

• Many of the his poems speak to the condition of dreams, which he shoots through with images possessing a strangely haunting vividness, as in 'The Ghost Ship', which summons a mysterious ship that floats through the crowded  streets with its vague, tonnage like winds.
• He frequently invokes everyday images, as in 'The Mailman', where a wraith-like mailman visits the narrator at midnight to deliver 'terrible personal news'.
• In 'The Last Bus' the poet imagines Rio de Janeiro, calling the sea 'a dream' in which the city 'dies and is reborn'.
• The poem is surreal in a manner that combines the dreamlike quality of Pablo Neruda with aspects of nightmare that recall such European expressionists as Georg Trakl.

Borges' idea inherent in the creative spirit of Mark Strand himself and the major themes and motifs that his poems and fictions dealt with over the years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws26Aqa7I9o