Blizzard of One

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Enlarged for the UK edition to include 11 poems Former Poet Laureate of the United States Winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Prize and Rockerfeller Foundation Award "This wonderful, varied new collection ... shows a wit reminiscent of John Ashbery - private, hard to pin down, addicted to deferrals and dying falls. If there is something scandalous in Strand's gorgeous, unabashed nostalgia or erotic melancholy, the scandal is how inescapable these modes remain, for us and for one of our most enjoyable poets."- Publishers' Weekly from Blizzard of One BLACK SEA One clear night while the others slept, I climbed the stairs to the roof of tyhe house and under a sky strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it, the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer, the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea, and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light. The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood on the lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear ... Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all that the world offers would you come only because I was here? Mark Strand is one of America's finest poets. He has been a recipient of the Bollinger Prize, the Bobbit Prize, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Edgar Allen Poe Prize, a Rockerfeller Foundation Award, and the Wallace Stevens Prize, as well as fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the MacArthur Foundation and the Ingram Merril Foundation. He has served as Poet Laureate of the United States.

Table of Contents:
I. Untitled The Beach Hotel Old Man Leaves Party I Will Love the Twenty-First Century The Next Time The Night, The Porch Precious Little The Great Poet Returns . II. Our Masterpiece Is the Private Life Morning, Noon, and Night A Piece of the Storm A Suite of Appearances Here Two de Chiricos Some Last Words . III. Five Dogs . IV. In Memory of Joseph Brodsky What It Was The Delirium Waltz The View . New Poems. Man and Camel Mother and Son Cake Marsyas Mirror Black Sea 2002 2032 Elevator The Webern Variations Poem after the Seven Last Words . Index of Titles and First Lines . A Note About the Author

Review :
"Since Yeats linked the 'labor to be beautiful' with the work of poetry, no poet has taken the link more to heart, or made handsomer, more stylish poems ... than former Poet Laureate Mark Strand ... This wonderful, varied new collection ... shows a wit reminiscent of John Ashbery - private, hard to pin down, addicted to deferrals and dying falls. If there is something scandalous in Strand's gorgeous, unabashed nostalgia or erotic melancholy, the scandal is how inescapable these modes remain, for us and for one of our most deeply enjoyable poets." - Publishers' Weekly "There are a handful of contemporary poets whom we can consider only by gazing upward... Mark Strand is undeniably one of these luminaries." -- The New York Times Book Review, Deborah Garrison