WEATHER WATCH: MARK STRAND'S THE WEATHERS OF WORDS

                                                   VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW 

In an essay, titled "On Becoming a Poet," that appeared simultaneously in The Weather of Words, a collection of his writings on poetry and poetics, and as a preface in The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, both books published in 2000, Mark Strand, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1999 and former Poet Laureate of the United States, comments upon his earliest attempts at writing poetry:

        My own poems ÷ the few that I wrote in my adolescence ÷ were feverish
        attempts to put "my feelings" on paper, and little more.  Their importance,
        at least for me, their FOUR DECADES of MARK STRAND' S POETRY