Customer Reviews

The Continuous Life,: Poems

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I gave this book the desert isle test; would I want it on a desert island if my library were limited to 100 American poetry books from 1990 and since. The answer is yes, this is Strand's best, it honors beauty as only the most refined aesthete could do. In these pages you will find Strand's quivalents [my equivocal way of saying `equivalents'] to "Ode on Melancholy" and Stevens's "Sunday Morning" and "Comedian as the Letter C." In a word, this is an elegant volume, as elegant as it is romantic.

You can count the great american poets who are writing today on a thumbless hand with mark strand as the palm. The poem "The Continuous Life" has been refered to as the perfect poem and I've asked my grandchildren to read the final poem in the volume "The End" at my graveside. We need poetry as a people and as individuals and if you have the nature to hear and feel it,poetry is the only truth there is.

I highly recommend these poems! Experts will have their reasons for loving Strand. As for myself, I find them accessible, moving, musical, visual, and just flat out great to read. Forget "what they mean," this guy can write. But then, I also find them edifying in the same way that Ecclesiastes is edifying. Good stuff.

I heard Mark Strand, that minimalist wraith from the 60s, had reinvented himself. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper, but the ***** reviews are puzzling. In the more concrete poems he seems partial to sex, cheap sex (not that cheap sex isn't a proper topic for poetry of course), not passion or tenderness, more, um, voyeurism? Despite this (and after all, mid-life crisis is a GREAT topic for poems!) it's all pretty boring - absolutely no formalist verve here; take Grotesques I, where all the care has gone into the subject-matter, not the language. Occasionally one comes across a stranded, pointless rhyme, no doubt in conformity with the law of averages or least effort - then at last, p36, yer actual trad ballad; it's OK, but I think Auden did it better, and it was by no means his best work. Translation(p48) decants New York School surreal zest into prose - but of course Strand wasn't a NYSer; it is the best piece, but it is an assumed identity. Guess I'll jest saddle up and mosey along. Git!

At the very least, Mark Strand is one of the most readable poets around. He's neither too obscure nor too obvious, and if his example were more widely followed then contemporary poetry might find a sizable audience. The poem "The Continuous Life" says everything that needs saying about the joys, hopes, fears, tensions, and emptiness of middle-class existence--or perhaps just plain human existence--and note how well the cascading rhythm matches its theme. It reminded me of James Salter's novel "Light Years," but Strand manages to compress his vision into a mere 28 lines. As an observer of the human comedy, he's quite perceptive.

My only major complaint with this volume is the somewhat repetitive subject matter--there is too much musing about the Nature of Art, too many descriptions of verdant scenery. Considering this was his first volume of original poetry in at least 10 years, we could have reasonably expected a little more variety. Or perhaps I'm being churlish. Don't let me discourage you: read this book.