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Blizzard of One

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Author Mark Strand
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Paperback
$19.00 US
Knopf
On sale Feb 08, 2000 | 72 Pages | 9780375701375
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 

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.
"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."
Copyright © 1998 by Mark Strand. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
  • WINNER | 1998
    Pulitzer Prize
© Sarah Shatz

Mark Strand, born in 1934, was the author of many books of poems, a book of stories, and three volumes of translations, and was the editor of several anthologies. He received many honors and awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize (for Blizzard of One), the Bollingen Prize, and the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990, he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States. He died in 2014.

View titles by Mark Strand

About

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 

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.

Excerpt

"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."
Copyright © 1998 by Mark Strand. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Awards

  • WINNER | 1998
    Pulitzer Prize

Author

© Sarah Shatz

Mark Strand, born in 1934, was the author of many books of poems, a book of stories, and three volumes of translations, and was the editor of several anthologies. He received many honors and awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize (for Blizzard of One), the Bollingen Prize, and the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990, he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States. He died in 2014.

View titles by Mark Strand

Other Books by this Author

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