[New-Poetry] Fwd: New books by Mark Strand and Mary Kinzie

Wed Oct 3 21:35:17 EDT 2007

-----Original Message-----
From: Knopf Poetry Newsletter <knopfpoetry at info.randomhouse.com>
To: JforJames at aol.com
Sent: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 2:00 pm
Subject: New books by Mark Strand and Mary Kinzie

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We're delighted to share excerpts from two fall poetry books. Mark Strand's New Selected Poems covers his career from the beginning: spanning four decades of work, during which Strand developed and refined his long poetic gaze and won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Blizzard of One, this selection offers a full sampling of the continually haunting work of a master. And then from the daring and elegant Mary Kinzie, a poem from California Sorrow, a new book that makes provocative poetry of our complex interactions with the landscape and the experiences and passions that bind us to it. 

Velocity Meadows 
I can say now that nothing was possible
But leaving the house and standing in front of it, staring
As long as I could into the valley. I knew that a train,
Trailing a scarf of smoke, would arrive, that soon it would rain.
A frieze of clouds lowered a shadow over the town,
And a driving wind flattened the meadows that swept
Beyond the olive trees and banks of hollyhock and rose.
The air smelled sweet, and a girl was waving a stick
At some crows so far away they seemed like flies.
Her mother, wearing a cape and shawl, shielded her eyes.
I wondered from what, since there was no sun. Then someone
Appeared and said, "Look at those clouds forming a wall, those   crows
Falling out of the sky, those fields, pale green, green-yellow,
Rolling away, and that girl and her mother, waving goodbye."
In a moment the sky was stained with a reddish haze,
And the person beside me was running away. It was dusk,
The lights of the town were coming on, and I saw, dimly at   first,
Close to the graveyard bound by rows of cypress bending   down,
The girl and her mother, next to each other,
Smoking, grinding their heels into the ground. 

                                                 —Mark Strand

The Parakeet 
There was my father's short sister rushing down the street
with white light flying out her fingerends
from a kitchen towel with which she must have sought
to lure or drive or flutter space down upon
                                                            (to calm it

a chartreuse parakeet
upright in grasshopper green against
the thick tip of a tall poplar bare of leaves

One of her children ran after with the birdcage

Nothing tragic closes the anecdote

It never became an anecdote
                                        When I began
           to tell it         ask it            to the cousins
                      did she scold down the parakeet
the grownups at the edges of the hour all seemed
to turn their backs
           from the room with the noontime hellish kids' TV show
and her children Joan
      and John Paul and Stephen and Bobbie Ann
                    went blank and jumpy
         as they ate their pb and j and drank their milk

as if I hadn't spoken
                              or were no longer there
as if they had never had a parakeet
                     as if the creature
           near the TV were new
                                       or never missing         or would
only flee the house in some
           far future after they'd
                               moved away
              while I could not
    not see it in all the time that would pass     then
till now
here    as it stood up like a woodpecker against the bark

green as the green of sun on murky water

as she made her distant warble to the world
                       (though she was more used to saying it
                                  to herself

The aunt is dead
           and the youngest
                                  female cousin with the bones of a bird

They haven't spoken

                              but they know 

                                                 —Mary Kinzie

KEEP CLICKING:

 About NEW SELECTED POEMS

 About CALIFORNIA SORROW

Attention collectors! There are still a few signed editions of Kevin Young's For the Confederate Dead and W.S. Di Piero's Chinese Apples available. Click here for details.

Excerpt from NEW SELECTED POEMS. Copyright © 2007 by Mark Strand. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Excerpt from CALIFORNIA SORROW. Copyright © 2007 by Mary Kinzie. Excerpted by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

We welcome your feedback. Please send any thoughts or questions to knopfpoetry at randomhouse.com 

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We're delighted to share excerpts from two fall poetry books. Mark Strand's New Selected Poems covers his career from the beginning: spanning four decades of work, during which Strand developed and refined his long poetic gaze and won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Blizzard of One, this selection offers a full sampling of the continually haunting work of a master. And then from the daring and elegant Mary Kinzie, a poem from California Sorrow, a new book that makes provocative poetry of our complex interactions with the landscape and the experiences and passions that bind us to it. 

Velocity Meadows 
I can say now that nothing was possible
But leaving the house and standing in front of it, staring
As long as I could into the valley. I knew that a train,
Trailing a scarf of smoke, would arrive, that soon it would rain.
A frieze of clouds lowered a shadow over the town,
And a driving wind flattened the meadows that swept
Beyond the olive trees and banks of hollyhock and rose.
The air smelled sweet, and a girl was waving a stick
At some crows so far away they seemed like flies.
Her mother, wearing a cape and shawl, shielded her eyes.
I wondered from what, since there was no sun. Then someone
Appeared and said, "Look at those clouds forming a wall, those   crows
Falling out of the sky, those fields, pale green, green-yellow,
Rolling away, and that girl and her mother, waving goodbye."
In a moment the sky was stained with a reddish haze,
And the person beside me was running away. It was dusk,
The lights of the town were coming on, and I saw, dimly at   first,
Close to the graveyard bound by rows of cypress bending   down,
The girl and her mother, next to each other,
Smoking, grinding their heels into the ground. 

                                                 —Mark Strand

The Parakeet 
There was my father's short sister rushing down the street
with white light flying out her fingerends
from a kitchen towel with which she must have sought
to lure or drive or flutter space down upon
                                                            (to calm it

a chartreuse parakeet
upright in grasshopper green against
the thick tip of a tall poplar bare of leaves

One of her children ran after with the birdcage

Nothing tragic closes the anecdote

It never became an anecdote
                                        When I began
           to tell it         ask it            to the cousins
                      did she scold down the parakeet
the grownups at the edges of the hour all seemed
to turn their backs
           from the room with the noontime hellish kids' TV show
and her children Joan
      and John Paul and Stephen and Bobbie Ann
                    went blank and jumpy
         as they ate their pb and j and drank their milk

as if I hadn't spoken
                              or were no longer there
as if they had never had a parakeet
                     as if the creature
           near the TV were new
                                       or never missing         or would
only flee the house in some
           far future after they'd
                               moved away
              while I could not
    not see it in all the time that would pass     then
till now
here    as it stood up like a woodpecker against the bark

green as the green of sun on murky water

as she made her distant warble to the world
                       (though she was more used to saying it
                                  to herself

The aunt is dead
           and the youngest
                                  female cousin with the bones of a bird

They haven't spoken

                              but they know 

                                                 —Mary Kinzie