{"product_id":"almost-invisible-isbn-9780375712180","title":"Almost Invisible","description":"From Pulitzer Prize–winner Mark Strand comes an exquisitely witty and poignant series of prose poems. Sometimes appearing as pure prose, sometimes as impure poetry, but always with Strand’s clarity and simplicity of style, they are like riddles, their answers vanishing just as they appear within reach. Fable, domestic satire, meditation, joke, and fantasy all come together in what is arguably the liveliest, most entertaining book that Strand has yet written.MARK STRAND is the author of twelve earlier books of poems. He is also the author of a book of stories, three volumes of translations, a number of anthologies (most recently \u003ci\u003e100 Great Poems of the Twentieth Century\u003c\/i\u003e), and monographs on the artists William Bailey and Edward Hopper. He has received many honors and awards for his poems, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize (for \u003ci\u003eBlizzard of One\u003c\/i\u003e), the Bollingen Prize, and the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990 he was chosen Poet Laureate of the United States. He teaches at Columbia  University.\u003ci\u003eA Banker in the Brothel of Blind Women\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA banker strutted into the brothel of blind women. “I am a shepherd,” he announced, “and blow my shepherd’s pipe as often as I can,but I have lost my flock and feel that I am at a critical point in my life.”“I can tell by the way you talk,”said one of the women,“that you are a banker only pretending to be a shepherd and that you want us to pity you, which we do because you have stooped so low as to try to make fools of us.” “My dear,” said the banker to the same woman,“I can tell that you are a rich widow looking for a little excitement and are not blind at all.” “This observation suggests,” said the woman, “that you may be a shepherd after all, for what kind of rich widow would find excitement being a whore only to end up with a banker?”“Exactly,” said the banker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Everyday Enchantment of Music\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music. Then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night inVenice when tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a heart in trouble.Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the memory of what happened af- ter Venice would begin, and what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePoem of the Spanish Poet\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a hotel room somewhere in Iowa an American poet, tired of his poems, tired of being an American poet, leans back in his chair and imagines he is a Spanish poet, an old Spanish poet, nearing the end of his life, who walks to the Guadalqui- vir and watches the ships, gray and ghostly in the twilight, slip downstream.The little waves, approaching the grassy bank where he sits, whisper something he can’t quite hear as they curl and fall. Now what does the Spanish poet do? He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a notebook, and writes:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBlack fly, black fly \u003cbr\u003eWhy have you come\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIs it my shirt \u003cbr\u003eMy new white shirt\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith buttons of bone \u003cbr\u003eIs it my suit\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy dark-blue suit \u003cbr\u003eIs it because\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI lie here alone \u003cbr\u003eUnder a willow\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCold as stone \u003cbr\u003eBlack fly, black fly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow good you are \u003cbr\u003eTo come to me now\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow good you are \u003cbr\u003eTo visit me here\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBlack fly, black fly \u003cbr\u003eTo wish me good-bye","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301614473445,"sku":"NP9780375712180","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375712180.jpg?v=1767721338","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/almost-invisible-isbn-9780375712180","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}