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List Price: $15.00Amazon.com's Price: $11.70 You Save: $3.30 (22%)as of 03/20/2010 10:42 EDT
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780375711268
ISBN: 0375711260
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 72
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This eleventh collection by Mark Strand is a toast to life’s transience and abiding beauty. He begins with a group of light but haunting fables, populated by figures like the King, a tiny creature in ermine who has lost his desire to rule, and by the poet’s own alter ego, who recounts the fetching mystery of the title poem: “I sat on the porch having a smoke / when out of the blue a man and a camel / happened by.” The poet has Arctic adventures and encounters with the bearded figure of Death; in his controlled tone, he creates his bold visions and shows us, like a magician, how they vanish in a blink. Gradually, his fancies give way to powerful scenes of loss, as in “The Mirror,” where the face of a beautiful woman stares past him
into a place I could only imagine . . .
as if just then I were stepping
from the depths of the mirror
into that white room, breathless and eager,
only to discover too late
that she is not there.
Man and Camel concludes with a small masterpiece of meditations crafted around the Seven Last Words of Christ. Here, this secular poet finds resonance in the bedrock of Christ’s language, the actual words that have governed so many generations of thought and belief. As always with Mark Strand, the discovery of meaning in the sound of language itself is an act of faith that enlightens us and carries us beyond the bounds of the rational.
From the Hardcover edition.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Mr. Strand writes poems that are brief and books that are brief. What Mr. Strand lacks in length, however, he makes up for in power. "A Piece of the Storm," an eleven line work from his last collection, Blizzard of One, is one of the best poems of the last 10 years. I was hoping to find something of that level in this collection and I did.
"2002" is another top tier poem. It is a meditation on death but with a twist. It begins: "I am not thinking of Death, but Death is thinking ... Read More
Rating: -
This was my first experience reading a full collection by Mark Strand but I am very impressed, which shouldn't be surprising giving the awards and honors that Strand has received.
To me, this collection is full of poems that are the narrator trying to find his place in the world. There are many poems that look into what it is to be a writer, but that is not the only place in the world that the narrator is looking for.
What I note the most in these poems, as a poet, is the ... Read More
Rating:  -
This is the eleventh poetry collection by Mark Strand and provides light masterpieces of spiritual meditations and social conditions. Poems are all free verse and vary immensely in theme and approach - but all are hard-hitting comments: "Something was wrong/screams could be heard/in the morning dark/it was cold." Mark Strand's reflections always make you think: MAN AND CAMEL is no exception.
Rating: -
Strand is a magnificent poet. His ideas and images are brilliant and the arrangement of the poems makes one flow into the other and it is impossible to stop reading. Tight and concise, lyrical and thought provoking, interesting and entertaining. He won a well-deserved Pulitzer a few years ago, and these poems are additional evidence as to why.
Favorites include "Black Sea," "Marsyas," "Mother and Son," and "Mirror."
Rating: -
The one quality that I haven't seen mentioned about this book yet is that as a reader it is as easy as possible to fall into the book from the first poem. I was sitting in the back of a bookstore while my daughter played with some toys there. From the first line of the first poem I was pulled in. I didn't even think about stopping. I tried the second poem. Same thing. And the third. I was thirty pages in before I noticed that we were late for dinner.
Does it matter that the poetry is immediately ... Read More
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Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780375711268
ISBN: 0375711260
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 72
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Studio: Knopf