Poetry collection- Andrew Collins

Mark Strand was a Canadian poet, born in 1934. He was appointed as United States Poet Laureate in 1990, and he received the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets in 1979. He taught English at the University of Utah from 1981 until the time when this poetry collection was published in 1991. He died recently in 2014. Some of his poetry collections include "Sleeping with One Eye Open", "Reasons for Moving", "The Story of Our Lives", and "The Late Hour".

I focused on his "Sleeping with One Eye Open" collection, published in 1964. This collection mainly focuses on the Author's fear of death and his perceived lack of purpose. His fear of death is most evident in the first poem, "Sleeping with One Eye Open", when he says "Hoping, That nothing, nothing will happen." His feeling of purposelessness is best shown in "Keeping Things Whole" where he says "Wherever I am, I am what is missing." and in "Make Believe Ballroom Time" where he envies the "calling" of the dancer that he feels he himself doesn't have. The subjects are primarily himself and nature, which he is terrified by and often feels lost in according to "Violent Storm" and "Keeping Things Whole."

https://boldpoems.wordpress.com/2007/03/26/the-tunnel/

This poem is a very clear example of the paranoia experienced by the author. He goes to very extreme lengths just to escape the man, even though the man doesn't seem to be particularly harmful if you can see through the author's bias of paranoia. The very premise of a man being "always there" seems to be more a product of the author's imagination than a true occurrence. And even if it were true, it takes extreme dedication to build a tunnel to your neighbor's basement, which further exemplifies the extremity of the paranoia experienced by the author.

I think Strand has a drastically different approach to poetry than myself. I can't even really begin to sympathize with his extreme feelings of paranoia, and I can't say I've ever written about something as depressing as a lack of purpose. Overall, I feel that I have a much more positive outlook on my life than Strand, especially in my writing. I do think that a slightly more negative outlook would be an interesting addition to my repertoire, possibly making my writing more realistic.