Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Weather of Words: Poetic Inventions

The Weather of Words: Poetic Inventions

Strand, Mark

Paperback

Letters & EssaysGeneral Poetry

Publisher Price: $17.00

ISBN10: 0375709703
ISBN13: 9780375709708
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: Nov 13 2001
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.39
Height: 0.50 Width: 4.97 Depth: 7.48
Language: English
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, a brilliant and witty collection of writings on the art and nature of poetry -- a master class both entertaining and provocative.

The pieces have a broad range and many levels. In one, we sit with the teenage Mark Strand while he reads for the first time a poem that truly amazes him: You, Andrew Marvell by Archibald MacLeish, in which night sweeps in an unstoppable but exhilarating circle around the earth toward the speaker standing at noon. The essay goes on to explicate the poem, but it also evokes, through its form and content, the poem's meaning -- time's circular passage -- with the young Strand first happening upon the poem, the older Strand seeing into it differently, but still amazed.

Among the other subjects Strand explores: the relationship between photographs and poems, the eternal nature of the lyric, the contemporary use of old forms, four American views of Parnassus, and an alphabet of poetic influences.

We visit as well Strandian parallel universes, whose absurdity illuminates the lack of a vital discussion of poetry in our culture at large: Borges drops in on a man taking a bath, perches on the edge of the tub, and discusses translation; a president explains in his farewell address why he reads Chekhov to his cabinet.

Throughout The Weather of Words, Mark Strand explores the crucial job of poets and their readers, who together joyfully attempt the impossible -- to understand through language that which lies beyond words.

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