MYSTERY AND SOLITUDE IN TOPEKA by Mark Strand

Poetry and artwork | $20

Perfect-bound, 17 pages,
5 full-color images, 8 x 8 in.

Mystery and Solitude in Topeka Promo Video by Blackmarket Boo

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Mystery and Solitude in Topeka

Afternoon darkens into evening. A man falls deeper and deeper into the slow spiral of sleep, into the drift of it, the length of it, through what feels like mist, and comes at last to an open door through which he passes without knowing why, then again without knowing why goes to a room where he sits and waits while the room seems to close around him and the dark is darker than any he has known, and he feels something forming within him without sure what it is, its hold on him growing, as if a story were about to unfold, in which two characters, Pleasure and Pain, commit the same crime, the one that is his, that he will confess to again and again, until it means nothing.

 

Mark Strand is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Man and Camel (Knopf, 2006); Blizzard of One (1998), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Dark Harbor (1993); The Continuous Life (1990);Selected Poems (1980); The Story of Our Lives (1973); and Reasons for Moving (1968). He has served as Poet Laureate of the United States and is a former Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. He currently teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.