A Jealousy I'm Proud to Own

Your poetry is dark, Mark Strand.
I want to emulate it as I hate
each line.  I want to cast it out,
then hold it to my breast
as the defeated one who knows
I could have said it first
had I retreated into selfhood,
placing honesty in all effrontery
and drawing forth the man
who dips into the soul
and finds his art.

I didn't do it.
The gold I see encrusted there
forever lies in your domain.
Every plain-scribed thought remains
your own no matter myriad the times
I have encountered it before,
for words fall on their knees
when spirit rules and art
is not contrived but flows forth
from its source.

I read these washer-woman words
with more than admiration, Mark.
I fondle them, enshrine their pages
with repeated reads, and you
will understand I fondly hate them
as they trace the highways
that a poet laureate selects,
the curves and scenic stops
along the way that I
shall never see or share.
        ~

Reviews

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

A poet forever strives to scribe that perfect work, that penultimate poem that will resound like thunder across the skies. When the lightning bolt of another's work strikes the scene, we can't help but admire and wish it were our own. Alas! We can't hold all the words, experience all things, and write the perfect poem that will speak to all. We are each gifted with our own words, our own lives, and our own talents. Hopefully, God gives us enough grit to polish our gems that they will shine for others to see, admire, and others wish to share.

[Dean]

Yet Strand stands alone, I think, a nearly unique stimulator of approaches that nearly silences me. Every thing he writes is a challenge to a new way of thinking. He simply cannot be pinpointed. I am finding his work something by which to profit over and over again-never to imitate, but always to emulate, and I can only hope that I may in some small way, do just that.