'First and Last, Language'

 

“Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.” – Mark Strand

  

Canadian-born (on Prince Edward Island where Anne of Green Gables is set), Strand studied in America and became an American citizen where he had a distinguished career as a poet, essayist and translator.  He died in 2014 at age 80.   In 1990 Strand was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and in 2004 he received the Wallace Stevens Award, given to "recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.”        

 

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Blizzard of One, he was known for his highly personal touch.  "Pain," he said, "is filtered in a poem so that, in the end, it becomes pleasure."   From Blizzard of One, for Saturday’s Poem, here is,

The Everyday Enchantment of Music

 

A 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 in Venice
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 after
Venice would begin, and what happened
after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.

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