"There is an open field...

I lie down in a hole I once dug and I praise the sky.
I praise the clouds that are like lungs of light."*

I picked up a copy of Mark Strand's Selected Poems at Powells over the holiday weekend, and I have been absolutely entranced ever since. The back cover has a page-long pull quote from Octavio Paz, discussing Strand's fascination with absence/presence (the self, the self!); I find this ironic, since I've been largely skipping over the poems that seem to deal directly with self/fracture/post-structuralist blah blah. That paradigm shifted ages ago already. I find Strand much more engaging when he finds an open field, lies down in a hole he once dug, and praises the sky. Yum.


*Mark Strand, From a Litany