"Keeping Things Whole," Mark Strand

In the first stanza of the frequently anthologized poem “Keeping Things Whole,” Strand sets the tone and presents the themes which continue to dominate his later work: “In a field / I am the absence / of field. / This is / always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing.” Just before his death in 2014, Strand asserted that he wrote this poem in 20 seconds during a card game.