Man and Camel: Poems (Paperback)

by Mark Strand (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
[Signature]Reviewed by Richard HowardAs fastidious as he is famous (both qualifications remarkable for an American poet of this day and age), Strand allows this new book to show all the signs of pruning and purging. The sieve of art descends into the well of intimate contemplation and retrieves 23 closely reasoned poems remarkably consistent in the character of the Baffled Seer persisting in the double terror (or is it joy?) of all Strand's expression: evanescence of the longed-for Other, desolate wonder of the self.It is no surprise, rather a sort of consolation, that except for the two poems commissioned to be read between movements of three Webern quartets and a Heyden quartet, most of these poems scrupulously record the actions and adventures of that wonderful "I," the character whose accents it has been Strand's genius to create in book after book: "I went to the middle of the room and called out," "I closed my eyes briefly," "I filled page after page," "I am not thinking of death," "...there would be a fire and I would walk into it," "I said that the dawning of the unknown was always before us," "I ran downstairs and called for my horse," "I'm going down," said I. And in the archetypal title poem: "I sat on the porch having a smoke" when the Other (here the Muse, the Mirage and what Strand calls "the ideal image for all uncommon couples") appears to the expectant smoker, "...just as they were vanishing/ the man and camel ceased to sing." The vision fades, the bereft self cannot be accommodated.The two chamber music commissions are curiously Miltonic (impersonally sumptuous) in their chastened baroque tonalities, but however grandly invested in the mysteries of music ("the secret voice of being telling us/ that where we disappear is where we are") and of spiritual dedication ("to know/ at last that nothing is more real than nothing"), Strand more characteristically winnows a familiar comfort from "My Name," one of the loveliest and humblest poems he has yet written, from whose 12 lines I cite only the final few as a sort of hostage to greatness:...and I heardmy name as if for the first time, heard it the wayone hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far offas though it belonged not to me but to the silencefrom which it had come and to which it would go.(Sept.) Richard Howard is a poet, critic and translator. He teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Strand is a riddler, at once vatic and comedic. A fabulist and a surrealist in the manner of Borges and Calvino, he writes spare, melancholy, and haunting poems. A painter before he became a poet, he translates into words the solitary spell of Edward Hopper and the mystery of Giorgio de Chirico. In his first major collection since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Blizzard of One (1998), Strand imagines an aging Death in a limo "with a blanket spread across his thighs"; and a man who sets out to pick up a cake but fails to do so, perhaps because he's "lost in thought" for years on end. Vigils are undertaken, and what arrives can be shattering, such as the man and camel in the title poem. People are displaced by unseen catastrophes, and the sea and the moon by turns reveal and conceal. By virtue of Strand's restraint, archetypal images, and pitch-perfect sense of the music of language, the most common words turn lustrous in poems of startling imagery and extraordinarily deep emotion. Two works originally composed to accompany string quartets are nothing less than sublime, "The Webern Variations" and "Poem after the Seven Last Words." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (March 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375711260
• ISBN-13: 978-0375711268
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #838,125 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strand continues to amaze, September 8, 2006

By	HB "Scholar" (Northeast USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man and Camel: Poems (Hardcover)

Mark Strand writes less poetry than almost any published poet in America today, and that is a good thing, because when Strand publishes a poem, one knows that it has been fastidiously conceived and revised. The result, poetry that is thoughtful and compelling, appealing to both intellect and intuition. This latest collection contains some of Strand's most humorous poetry, and some of his most disturbing. Yet the poetry in here represents not so much a departure from previous Strand as a continuing evolution. One is inclined to say he keeps getting better.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Glorious Poetry, September 8, 2006

By	Emily C. Fragos (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Man and Camel: Poems (Hardcover)

Mark Strand's Man and Camel is an extraordinarily beautiful and moving book of contemporary poetry. From the unforgettable opening poem of the melancholy king who has lost his desire to rule to the closing, wrenching meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, set to Haydn's Quartet Opus 51, Strand is numenous and feeling. It is hard to pick favorite poems; each is a polished gem, but here is just one line that took my breath away: "Then I went to the window/and a river of old people with canes and flashlights/were inching their way down through the dark to the sea." This is a great, powerful book by a great, powerful poet.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Falling in, October 1, 2006

By	Brian G. Fay (Syracuse, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Man and Camel: Poems (Hardcover)

The one quality that I haven't seen mentioned about this book yet is that as a reader it is as easy as possible to fall into the book from the first poem. I was sitting in the back of a bookstore while my daughter played with some toys there. From the first line of the first poem I was pulled in. I didn't even think about stopping. I tried the second poem. Same thing. And the third. I was thirty pages in before I noticed that we were late for dinner.

Does it matter that the poetry is immediately engaging? Yes. Immediate engagement is a fantastic first step. I've only read those thirty pages or so once, but my guess is that as I go back to them they will become more interesting, not less.

I'm reminded, in reading this, of "Eating Poetry" which is what I want to do with this book, the way I would dive into a slice of New York pizza or a perfectly cooked cheeseburger. Delicious.