At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova featured 89 Clouds, collaboration of Pulitzer-winning poet Mark Strand and artist Wendy Mark. Interspersed with 89 stunningly beautiful paintings of clouds are Strand’s one-line zennish poems. Popova excerpted 16 of them.
Published in 1999, 89 Clouds is out-of-print; copies are both rare and expensive. When we found a lovely pdf book of some of Mark’s cloud images published online by Jill Newhouse gallery, we put together a hybrid of Strand’s excerpted poems and a selection of Mark’s sensational images.
We now view clouds differently as we wander through the world.
A cloud is never a mirror
Words about clouds are clouds themselves
If snow falls inside a cloud, only the cloud knows
A cloud dreams only of triangles
Clouds are thoughts without words
If a parrot is lost in a cloud, it turns into a rainbow
Clouds are drawn by invisible birds
Clouds are in love with horizons
The cloud that was gone would never come back
Every lake desires a cloud
A cloud without you is only a clod
A cloud is a cathedral without belief
A cloud is mansion without corners
A cloud lit from within is somebody’s study
Clouds cannot see what we do under the umbrella
A poet looks at a cloud the way a man looks at a shrub
Check out Brain Picking’s full post AND the gorgeous virtual book of Mark’s work at Jill Newhouse.