[New-Poetry] Reading Report: Mark Strand

[jforjames at aol.com]

I heard Mark Strand read at Smith College last night. He was
in great form. (Older than one would think, and he made a few 
jokes about his age.) Unless he's a good liar, he was dipping into 
older poems at whim or because someone on the Smith falcuty asked
him to read a paticular poem. He said about one poem, I haven't
ever?this one in a?public reading. And yet, without a prepared?
presentation of?planned sequence of poems,?each one?he read he
read?without a hitch.


He didn't 'over-introduce' his poems. He'd give a bit orf chronological
detail (early or late poem, a brief?narrative glimpse of the times),?and 
then he just launch into it. 


I think one thing I noticed in the reading, is how he strings together
phrases with one or two linking (repeated) words. Not like anaphora,
just that successive phrase picks up or echoes?one or two of the words in
the prior phrase. Wheh he doesn't inflect the words, he doesn't press on
the sounds, yet he has a dulcet, lilting?style of delivery. I heard and I 
believed.

Finnegan
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