SOURCE: Mitova, Katia. “On the Ease of Writing Lists.” Denver Quarterly 36, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 2002): 94-7.

In the following essay, Mitova contends that the poems in Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More are actually simply lists that seem to invite the reader “into poetry in general, and into Mark Strand's poetry in particular.”

Mark Strand's twenty-first book, Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More, is an elegant collection of one-liners organized in loose lists by repeated key words. While reading it, I am itching to quote this or that line to a friend, to insert new lines into the book, or to write my own lists in the same spirit. I found out that I am not alone in this ridiculous itch for co-authorship: readers of Strand's lists, who have not attempted to write poetry even during their first-love years, are telling me they feel like generating a few more one-liners in Strand fashion...