Man and Camel

This is the eleventh poetry collection by Mark Strand and provides light masterpieces of spiritual meditations and social conditions. Poems are all free verse and vary immensely in theme and approach - but all are hard-hitting comments: "Something was wrong/screams could be heard/in the morning dark/it was cold." Mark Strand's reflections always make you think: MAN AND CAMEL is no exception.

Strand is a magnificent poet. His ideas and images are brilliant and the arrangement of the poems makes one flow into the other and it is impossible to stop reading. Tight and concise, lyrical and thought provoking, interesting and entertaining. He won a well-deserved Pulitzer a few years ago, and these poems are additional evidence as to why. Favorites include "Black Sea," "Marsyas," "Mother and Son," and "Mirror."

The one quality that I haven't seen mentioned about this book yet is that as a reader it is as easy as possible to fall into the book from the first poem. I was sitting in the back of a bookstore while my daughter played with some toys there. From the first line of the first poem I was pulled in. I didn't even think about stopping. I tried the second poem. Same thing. And the third. I was thirty pages in before I noticed that we were late for dinner. Does it matter that the poetry is immediately engaging? Yes. Immediate engagement is a fantastic first step. I've only read those thirty pages or so once, but my guess is that as I go back to them they will become more interesting, not less. I'm reminded, in reading this, of "Eating Poetry" which is what I want to do with this book, the way I would dive into a slice of New York pizza or a perfectly cooked cheeseburger. Delicious.

Mark Strand's Man and Camel is an extraordinarily beautiful and moving book of contemporary poetry. From the unforgettable opening poem of the melancholy king who has lost his desire to rule to the closing, wrenching meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, set to Haydn's Quartet Opus 51, Strand is numenous and feeling. It is hard to pick favorite poems; each is a polished gem, but here is just one line that took my breath away: "Then I went to the window/and a river of old people with canes and flashlights/were inching their way down through the dark to the sea." This is a great, powerful book by a great, powerful poet.

Mark Strand writes less poetry than almost any published poet in America today, and that is a good thing, because when Strand publishes a poem, one knows that it has been fastidiously conceived and revised. The result, poetry that is thoughtful and compelling, appealing to both intellect and intuition. This latest collection contains some of Strand's most humorous poetry, and some of his most disturbing. Yet the poetry in here represents not so much a departure from previous Strand as a continuing evolution. One is inclined to say he keeps getting better.