Influential Poet & Works

Although within the twentieth century and therefore not truly a classic just yet, Donald Justice helped pave a lyrical path for Mark Strand, who was influenced by this late poet. Living from 1924 to 2004, Justice was associated with the Iowa's Writing Workshop as Strand was, and was best known for his "formal control, depth of insight, and limpid, elegiac lines." In his carreer, filled with not an abundance of poems but rather a small quantity of great quality, he won many prestiguous awards including the Lamont Poetry Prize for The Summer Anniversaries (1960), the Pulitzer Prize for Selected Poems (1979) and the Bollingen Prize in 1991. In his poems he used the themes of memory, lost, and chance, to delve into the reader's souls and express sincere and beautiful meanings. It is easy to see the correlations between Strand and Justice's work, both use memory and loss, using emptiness as a tool to express there feelings about themselves and the world around them. Strand also seems to have developed Justice's keen insight on word choice.

ABSENCES

It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white keys
Of a childhood piano--outside the window, palms!
And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining,
Soon to let down its white or yellow-white.

Now, only these poor snow-flowers in a heap,
Like the memory of a white dress cast down . . .
So much has fallen.
And I, who have listened for a step
All afternoon, hear it now, but already falling away,
Already in memory. And the terrible scales descending
On the silent piano; the snow; and the absent flowers abounding.
Within the poem above we see the ever present "absence" both Justice and Strand feel, and the feeling of total isolation.

MEN AT FORTY

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to
Here we see some subtle humor, that Strand inevitebly picked up on and carried into his own work. They both choose words carefully, not saying more then needed to convey the important messages they want.