‘When I read poetry’: in memory of Mark Strand

Anthony Wilson, , , ,
Engraved into fallen autumn leaves, the shape of a heart. In the background, a white van parked at the kerbside.

I am sad because the great American poet Mark Strand has died.

Among the tributes to him in the last few days was this, from an interview with The Paris Review: The Art of Poetry No 77 (1998).

The words belong to Strand. I have merely reshaped them on the page.

When I read poetry
I want to feel myself
suddenly larger…
in touch with –
or at least close to –
what I deem magical,
astonishing.
I want to experience
a kind of wonderment.
And when you report back
to your own daily world
after experiencing the strangeness
of a world sort of recombined
and reordered in the depths
of a poet’s soul,
the world looks fresher somehow.
Your daily world
has been taken out of context.
It has the voice of the poet
written all over it,
for one thing,
but it also seems suddenly more alive…

Mark Strand (1934-2014)

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Published by Anthony Wilson

I am a lecturer, poet and writing tutor. I work in teacher and medical education at the University of Exeter. My anthology Lifesaving Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. In 2012 I published Riddance (Worple Press), a collection of poems, and Love for Now (Impress Books), a memoir, about my experience of cancer. The Wind and the Rain, my sixth collection of poems, is available now from Blue Diode Publishing. My current research project, funded by the Foyle Foundation, is Young Poets' Stories: https://youngpoetsstories.com/. This blog is archived by the British Library.

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