Keeping Things Whole

by Mark Strand

The poet describes himself as a void. Where ever he is standing he is subtracting from the whole picture. When he is in a field, he is the only thing that is not a field. Whenever he moves, the air moves:

"to fill the spaces
where [his] body's been."

The poet structures his poem to add further meaning to the words that he uses. Since each line is cut mid-phrase it has the reader grasping for the rest of the meaning. Just like in the content of poem, when the author says:

"I move
to keep things whole."

The poet has the reader constantly moving forward to fill in the gaps in meaning. The line breaks also provide pauses, which in a sense give the feeling of a gap, so once again the line breaks serve directly as a conveyance for the poets meaning.