Strand, Mark

Strand, Mark,

1934–2014, American poet, b. Prince Edward Island, Canada, grad. Antioch College (B.A., 1957), Yale (B.F.A., 1959), Iowa Writers' Workshop (M.A., 1962). Meditative and death-haunted, his succinct early poetry is noted for its confrontation with the surreal and irrational; his later work is longer and more inclusive. His collections include Sleeping with One Eye Open (1964), Darker (1970), Selected Poems (1980), Dark Harbor (1995), Blizzard of One (1998; Pulitzer Prize), and Collected Poems: Mark Strand (2014). He also published a novel, Mr. and Mrs. Baby (1985); edited several distinguished poetry anthologies, including The Contemporary American Poets (1969) and Another Republic (1976); and wrote studies of the painters William Bailey and Edward Hopper. A MacArthur fellow (1987), Strand was poet laureate of the United States (1990–91).

Strand, Mark

(1934– ) poet, writer; born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada. His family moved to the United States (1938), and he attended Antioch (B.A. 1957), Yale (B.F.A. 1959), and the University of Iowa (M.A. 1962). He taught at many institutions, notably the University of Utah (1981), received a MacArthur Foundation Grant (1987), and was named poet laureate by the Library of Congress (1990). He wrote fiction, criticism, and children's books, and worked as a translator and editor. He is best known, however, for his lyric poetry, as in Selected Poems (1980).