Blizzard of One

Strand's poems occupy a place that exists between abstraction and the sensuous particulars of experience. It is a place created by a voice that moves with unerring ease between the commonplace and the sublime. The poems are filled with "the weather of leavetaking," but they are also unexpectedly funny. The erasure of self and the depredations of time are seen as sources of sorrow, but also as grounds for celebration. This is one of the difficult truths these poems dramatize with stoicism and wit. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Blizzard of One is an extraordinary book--the summation of the work of a lifetime by one of our very few true masters of the art of poetry.Mark Strand is a former Poet Laureate of the United States. He has written eight earlier books of poems, which have brought him many honors and grants, including a MacArthur Fellowship. He is the author of a book of stories, Mr. and Mrs. Baby, several volumes and translations (of works by Rafeal Alberti and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, among others), the editor of a number of anthologies, and author of several monographs on contemporary artists (William Bailey and Edward Hopper). He was born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and was raised and educated in the United States and South America. He teaches currently in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago."A Piece of the Storm"

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,

A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room

And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up

From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's all

There was to it. No more than a solemn waking

To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,

A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that

Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,

Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,

That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:

"It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening."