Roland Barthe's The Pleasure of the Text (1973) is a difficult but rewarding meditation on the pleasure of reading. Many of Strand's poems poetically address subjects in Barthe's study.

Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979), a postmodern novel, addresses themes that recur in Strand's poetry, such as the role of the reader, the relationship between words and the material world, and how stories shape human beings' conception of themselves and others.

In 1985, Strand published Mr. and Mrs. Baby, his only collection of fiction. Like his poetry, many of these stories concern fantasy and dreaming.

Strand's Selected Poems (1990) contains most of the poet's best-known work and is indispensable for critics or those interested in Strand's literary development.