[In the following essay, Hamilton offers a brief analysis of the formal features of Strand's poem “The History of Poetry.”]

Of Mark Strand's poems since 1990, “The History of Poetry” (Continuous [The Continuous Life] 56) is representative both formally and thematically of his more recent work. Strand used short stanza forms for many of his poems from the 1960s to the 1980s, but his more recent poems are somewhat longer, normally consisting of one stanza. “The Great Poet Returns” (Blizzard [Blizzard of One] 12), an example that readers of the New Yorker magazine would have seen on 20 November 1995, is one clear instance of a formal shift away from the shorter forms of Strand's past. This shift from short to long no doubt culminated in Dark Harbor (1993), a long poem in forty-five parts, written mainly in tercets. However, to best see where Strand's new formal tendencies began, it is perhaps best to analyze “The History of Poetry” for what it tells us of Strand's artistic concerns since 1990.

Structurally, “The History of Poetry” is a single stanza poem of 23 lines, and it consists of four sentences. Three of the sentences are rhetorical questions. The first question, about who would hear the old “masters” of poetry, were they to return from the grave, is answered in line 7. “None of us here” (7), Strand says, would be able to hear poetry's long-gone masters. This is the only question of the three that is really answered within the poem. As for the speaker, Strand's use of the first-person plural pronouns, “us” and “we” lends the poem a tone of collaboration between speaker and reader. The critic William Doreski, when discussing this “pronominal I-you paradigm” in contemporary American poetry, has said that these pronouns can “assure the reader that this is a community of at least two, rather than a self-reflexive construct” (163). On the one hand, then, the reader is felt to be a part of the conversation, given these pronouns. The questions in which they are embedded also draw in readers who search the poem for answers. On the other hand, there is some counterpoint involved because the enjambment of lines 6 and 7 entices readers. If no one can hear what the great old poets had to say about our world, then Strand would appear to be telling his readers that no one is ready to hear what he has to say now. This lowering of the arms before the battle begins, as it were, serves Strand well rhetorically. Tension between the poem's common diction and its searching, questioning tone enhances the counterpoint seen in many of the lines. Thus, Strand's argument that poetry must still be spoken, even if it readers are unprepared for it, shines through the remaining lines by encouraging the poet to persist in his task.

Rhythmically, the fine balance of end-stopped and enjambed lines reveals a cadence in the poem that reflects the subject of the history of poetry. The end-stopped lines slow the pace set by the faster lines earlier on in the poem. This suggests a heaviness or lamentation over nature's loss, over man's entrapped state within this world. As Strand argues in the last five lines of the poem, our senses and our entrapment limit us and hinder our actions:

So we do nothing but count the trees, the clouds,
The few birds left; then we decide that we shouldn't
Be hard on ourselves, that the past was no better
Than now, for hasn't the enemy always existed,
And wasn't the church of the world already in ruins?

(19-23)

The iambic rhythm surfacing here blends with the turning point in the poem. Strand's argument is that we are to take this state of affairs a little less seriously than we might do, although his irony mustn't be lost. The path of least resistance is denial. Rewriting the past so that it better accounts for the present implies one resolution to Strand's searching questions. Whether or not this is mere self-deception on the part of the persona is, of course, just one of the things Strand asks us to contemplate here.

Metrically, “The History of Poetry” follows a rather loose pattern regarding syllables, but consecutive pairs of lines almost mirror identically one another in length of feet. Also, there is an echo of rhythm patterns just under the surface here. In the lines cited above, Strand seems to suggest that the dominant accentual pattern of past English poetry (i.e., iambic) is still sufficient for contemporary purposes. Moreover, concerning the poem's cadence, many of the lines have frontal caesurae, which take some speed off of the enjambed lines and put emphasis on the brief slowing down of the lines before they roll on again. As for the near rhymes, they seem distributed along sounds both light and heavy: the heavy sounds of end-stopped lines, ending with ed's, d's, or n's (e.g., returned, sound, tuned, existed, autumn, waken, range), contrast with the enjambed lines, ending with lighter sounding s's (e.g., stars, is, doors, voices, steps, sighs, farms, clouds, ruins). The latter connote vivid images that linger through the poem, and finally these lines clarify the initially vague concepts: “And do nothing but doze, half-hearing sighs / Of this or that breeze drift aimlessly over the failed farms” (14-15). Vague intangible items become clearer and clearer and the poem progresses. To “doze” better defines doing “nothing,” and the “failed farms” of the landscape make concrete the wanton “breeze.” For Strand, the significance behind these images is the concern of poetry, for they help define the unknowable, help complete our thoughts, no matter how vague. Even Strand's lyrical tendencies are visible in this poem because there is a musicality to these lines. That musicality conveys the tradition and craft of poetry to the reader. In so doing, Strand has embedded within the poem concerns about the history of this art form itself.

Formally, the poem is nearly a double sonnet, with most lines being pentameter in length. By naming the poem “The History of Poetry,” Strand forces himself to create a visible form recognizable as poetry. While the poem appears to be in free verse, the alliteration, rhythm, feet, and conventional flush-left lines with initial capitalization would suggest a principled form here. All these elements work in conjunction to make it look and feel like a poem paying formal homage to poems written before it. Strand's rhetorical questions nearly seem medieval, reminiscent of Villon's “Où sont les neiges d'antin?” and the poems of the old “Ubi suent?” tradition. Likewise, within the context of Strand's volume, “The History of Poetry” reveals Strand's interest in Rilke's rhetorical questions, questions that are spoken dramatically by speakers here and elsewhere in The Continuous Life. The limits and shortcomings of man and the melancholy of angels who hover temptingly close to our plane of existence were recurring themes in Rilke's work. Strand returns to them here, for he argues ultimately that we “shouldn't be / Hard on ourselves” (20-21). Strand's attempts to take on grand subjects in down-to-earth American language reveal tensions between form and content. The poem appears deceivingly simple, but its intricate formal schemes suggest it is well crafted. Such is to be expected in a poem titled “The History of Poetry,” which highlights Strand's gift for beautiful verse that is partly conventional, partly original, and completely versatile.

Works Cited

Doreski, William. The Modern Voice in American Poetry. Gainesville, FL: U P of Florida, 1995.

Strand, Mark. The Continuous Life. New York: Knopf, 1992.

———. Dark Harbor. New York: Knopf, 1993.

———. Blizzard of One. New York: Knopf, 1998.