No charge for the program. Advance registration required. Register online in order to receive the Zoom session invitation link and readings packet. Please email Michael Bellacosa at mbellacosa@wiltonlibrary.org with any questions.

Mark Strand is considered “a poet of mood and longing.” His themes are those of “absence and negation.” We will consider if these are the only themes in his poems. His wit threads through his work, and the poignancy of his ideas affects us.

He was born in 1934  and died in 2014. In 1999 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his book of poems, Blizzard of One. During the 60s, he enjoyed being part of the “popular underground of poets” who toured the college campuses. “I liked the uncertainties of my life,” he said at that time. And he liked college girls flocking around him and his fellow poets. He early on wanted to be an artist, but decided to become a poet instead. Strand wrote a stunning book Hopper in which he analyzed the figures in Hopper’s paintings as “characters trapped in the space of their waiting.”

Will we find this observation in Strand’s poems?

Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, “Borrowed Scenery,” Yuganta Press, and “Through the Trees of Autumn,” Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s  young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild. Several of her poems have been published in Amethyst Review.