Mark Strand

Mark Apter Strand was born on April 11, 1934, in Summerside on Prince Edward’s Island in Canada. His father’s job with Pepsi-Cola entailed many transfers. Mr. Strand spent his childhood in Cleveland, Halifax, Montreal, New York and Philadelphia and his teenage years in Colombia, Mexico and Peru. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Antioch College in Ohio in 1957, he enrolled in the Yale School of Art and Architecture, studying under Josef Albers. By the time he received his bachelor of fine arts in painting in 1959, he had discovered his vocation as a poet. He spent a year in Florence on a Fulbright Grant studying 19th-century Italian poetry and was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, from which he graduated with a master of fine arts in 1962. In 1987, Mr. Strand was named a MacArthur fellow by the MacArthur Foundation, and in 1993 he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, given every two years by the Beinecke Library at Yale. Until quite recently, he taught at Columbia University. Mr. Strand was named poet laureate of the United States in 1990 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1999 for his collection “Blizzard of One.” Mr. Strand had been living in Madrid and was in the process of moving to Brooklyn. In addition to his daughter Jessica Strand, Mr. Strand is survived by his partner, Maricruz B ilbao. His two marriages ended in divorce. Other survivors are his son, Thomas; a sister, Judith Major; and a grandson.