Mark Strand read at the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival in 2011. I had only sporadically read his poems before, and was not expecting much. I was thoroughly impressed and soon afterwards, purchased Blizzard of One, his book of poems that won the Pulitzer Prize. Often I have been confused by the book that wins the Pulitzer Prize. This goes for both poetry and fiction, however Blizzard of One is an exception to this rule.

One of the reasons I really love the book is that Strand consistently writes about the world, in new way’s, that alter reality, giving the reader a small taste of distance, and perspective, that belongs to someone else. The following poem is a good example of his ability to re frame the familiar.

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.”