Poet Mark Strand

(photo via Paying Attention To The Sky)

Poet Laureate Mark Strand's short pieces surprise me - they're often not metered nor rhymed, often not confined to the fractional line-by-line style of poetry, and they're often quite dreamy until you reach their sock-you-in-the-stomach ending words. His liberation from structure inspires me (though one structured poem of his that is incredible is Keeping Things Whole). He spends most of his days professing at Columbia University, but tomorrow Paris has her hooks in him and we're not letting him go until he reads from his new book, Almost Invisible. Even better, his translator will be there to submerge into French sentences like this:

"All this in the vague, yellowing light that lowers itself in the hour before dark; none of it of value except for the pleasure it gives, enlarging an instant and finally making it seem as if it were true."
(from Clarities of the Nonexistent)

Humina.

Mark Strand Poetry Reading with French Translation
FREE
Wednesday, April 4th - 6pm
American University of Paris - Grand Salon
6 rue du Colonel Combes, Room C12
Métro: M8 or M13 to Invalides