Mark Strand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Strand

Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 – November 29, 2014) was a Canadian-born American poet, essayist and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990.[1] He was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University from 2005 until his death in 2014.

Contents [show] Biography[edit] Strand was born in 1934 at Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada.[2] Raised in a secular Jewish family,[3][4] his early years were spent in North America, while much of his teenage years were spent in South and Central America. In 1957, he earned his B.A. from Antioch College in Ohio. Strand then studied painting under Josef Albers at Yale University where he earned a B.F.A in 1959. On a Fulbright Scholarship, Strand studied nineteenth-century Italian poetry in Italy during 1960–1961.

He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa the following year and earned a Master of Arts in 1962. In 1965 he spent a year in Brazil as a Fulbright Lecturer.[5]

His academic career has taken him to numerous colleges and universities to teach. A partial list:

Teaching positions University of Iowa, Iowa City, instructor in English, 1962–1965 University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Fulbright lecturer, 1965–1966 Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, assistant professor, 1967 Columbia University, New York City, adjunct associate professor, 1969–1972 Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, New York City, associate professor, 1970–1972 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Bain-Swiggett Lecturer, 1973 Brandeis University, Hurst professor of poetry, 1974–1975 University of Utah, Salt Lake City, professor of English, 1981–1993 Johns Hopkins University, Elliot Coleman Professor of Poetry, 1994–c. 1998 University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, 1998 – ca. 2005 Columbia University, New York City, professor of English and Comparative Literature, ca. 2005–2014 Visiting professor at University of Washington, 1968, 1970 Columbia University, 1980 Yale University, 1969–1970 University of Virginia, 1976, 1978 California State University at Fresno, 1977 University of California at Irvine, 1979 Wesleyan University, 1979 Harvard University, 1980 In 1997, he left Johns Hopkins University to accept the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professorship of Social Thought at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. In 2005–06, Strand began again to teach literature and creative writing at Columbia University, in New York City.

In 1981, Strand was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress during the 1990–1991 term. Strand has received numerous awards including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1999 for Blizzard of One.

Strand died of liposarcoma on November 29, 2014, in Brooklyn, New York, according to family.[6]

Poetry[edit] Many of Strand's poems are nostalgic in tone, evoking the bays, fields, boats, and pines of his childhood on Prince Edward Island. Strand has been compared to Robert Bly in his use of surrealism, though he attributes the surreal elements in his poems to an admiration of the works of Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, and René Magritte.[7] Strand's poems use plain and concrete language, usually without rhyme or meter. In a 1971 interview, Strand said, "I feel very much a part of a new international style that has a lot to do with plainness of diction, a certain reliance on surrealist techniques, and a strong narrative element."[8]

Awards[edit] 1960–1961: Fulbright Fellowship 1979: Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets 1987: MacArthur Fellowship 1990–1991: Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress 1992: Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry 1993: Bollingen Prize 1999: Pulitzer Prize, for Blizzard of One 2004: Wallace Stevens Award 2009: Gold Medal in Poetry, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters[9] Bibliography[edit] Poetry[edit] 1964: Sleeping with One Eye Open, Stone Wall Press 1968: Reasons for Moving: Poems, Atheneum[5] 1970: Darker: Poems, including "The New Poetry Handbook", Atheneum[5] 1973: The Story of Our Lives, Atheneum[5] ISBN 9780689105760 1973: The Sargentville Notebook, Burning Deck[5] 1978: Elegy for My Father, Windhover[5] 1978: The Late Hour, Atheneum[5] 1980: Selected Poems, including "Keeping Things Whole", Atheneum[5] 1990: The Continuous Life, Knopf[5] ISBN 9780679738442 1990: New Poems[5] 1991: The Monument, Ecco Press (see also The Monument, 1978, prose)[5] 1993: Dark Harbor: A Poem, long poem divided into 55 sections, Knopf[5] 1998: Blizzard of One: Poems, Knopf[5] winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for poetry 1999: Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More, with illustrations by the author, Turtle Point Press[5] 1999: "89 Clouds" a single poem, monotypes by Wendy Mark and introduction by Thomas Hoving, ACA Galleries (New York)[5] 2006: Man and Camel, Knopf[2] ISBN 9780375711268 2007: New Selected Poems[10] 2012: Almost Invisible, Random House, ISBN 9780307957313 Prose[edit] 1978: The Monument, Ecco (see also The Monument, 1991, poetry)[5] ISBN 9780880012744 1982: Contributor: Claims for Poetry, edited by Donald Hall, University of Michigan Press[5] 1982: The Planet of Lost Things, for children[5] 1983: The Art of the Real, art criticism, C. N. Potter[5] 1985: The Night Book, for children[5] 1985: Mr. and Mrs. Baby and Other Stories, short stories, Knopf[5] ISBN 9780880013864 1986: Rembrandt Takes a Walk, for children[5] 1987: William Bailey, art criticism, Abrams[5] 1993: Contributor: Within This Garden: Photographs by Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Columbia College Chicago/Aperture Foundation[5] 1994: Hopper, art criticism, Ecco Press[5] ISBN 9780307957108 2000: The Weather of Words: Poetic Invention, Knopf[5] 2000: With Eavan Boland, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Norton (New York)[5] Poetry translations[edit] 1971: 18 Poems from the Quechua, Halty Ferguson[2] 1973: The Owl's Insomnia, poems by Rafael Alberti, Atheneum[2] 1976: Souvenir of the Ancient World, poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Antaeus Editions[10] 2002: Looking for Poetry: Poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Rafael Alberti, with Songs from the Quechua[10] 1993: Contributor: "Canto IV", Dante's Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets edited by Daniel Halpern, Harper Perennial 1986, according to one source, or 1987, according to another source:[5] Traveling in the Family, poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, with Thomas Colchie; translator with Elizabeth Bishop, Colchie, and Gregory Rabassa) Random House[5] Editor[edit] 1968: The Contemporary American Poets, New American Library[2] 1970: New Poetry of Mexico, Dutton[2] 1976: Another Republic: Seventeen European and South American Writers, with Charles Simic, Ecco[2] 1991: The Best American Poetry 1991, Macmillan[5] 1994: Golden Ecco Anthology, Ecco Press[5] 1994: The Golden Ecco Anthology[2] 2005: 100 Great Poems of the Twentieth Century, W. W. Norton[2] Sources[edit] Perkins, George and Barbara Perkins, Ed. (1988) Contemporary American Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill Galgano, Andrea, Ed. (2013) Mark Strand. L'assenza e l'ombra in Mosaico Roma: Aracne