STRAND, Mark | Four unpublished poems
Undated [circa 1970-1972].
Based on internal evidence, these four poems were probably composed when Strand was a professor at Brooklyn College in the early 1970s. In 2006, they were returned to Strand by his ex-wife Antonia Ratensky, who noted on the verso of the envelope: “You should probably have these…”
Strand’s early work is characterized by an intense concern for identity and anxiety about death. As David Kirby remarked in Mark Strand and the Poet’s Place in Contemporary Culture, “Many poems in Strand’s first book [Sleeping with One Eye Open, 1964] show an uneasy preoccupation with self, and the vehicle used to express that preoccupation is often a dream state in which the speaker is divided between two worlds and can locate himself comfortably in neither.” Critics, however, discerned a shift with Strand’s third book [Darker, 1970]. Harold Bloom found that “the irreality of Borges, though still near, is receding in Darker, as Strand opens himself more to his own vision.”
That affirmative vision is on display in this collection of free verse with annotations in Strand’s own hand. All of the poems exult, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, in the perfection of nature and the lessons that can be learned there. “Vocation of Being” observes blades of grass sprouting up in the early morning dew “through a soil that gracefully yields,” revealing their god-given purpose to onlookers. In “Mid-Morning,” Strand conjures the “eleven o’ clock sun,” which suffuses an unnamed street with “normal vigor”—a “sufficient marvel” that leaves us “humble, fulfilled.” “This Moon” returns to one of Strand’s favorite symbols. Far from anxious or haunted, the speaker in “More Truth” is in the grip of a Werther-like ecstasy, demanding that a “sun-drenched world come / More powerful / Than might,” so that he might encounter “essential reality” “by day.” Only then can his “lover’s instinct” be brought to light, allowing him to remark on his mystical communion with the cosmos.
The contents of the collection include the following:
1. Typescript draft with autograph annotations. “Vocation of Being.” Undated [1970-1972]. 4to.; recto only.
2. Typescript draft with autograph annotations. “Mid-Morning.” Undated [1970-1972]. 4to.; recto only.
3. Typescript draft with autograph annotations. “This Moon.” Undated [1970-1972]. 4to.; recto only.
4. Typescript draft with autograph annotations. “More Truth.” Undated [1970-1972]. 4to.; two leaves; rectos only.