Prize-Winning American Poet Mark Strand Dies In New York

Poet Mark Strand, a former poet laureate of the United States and a Pulitzer Prize winner, has died at the age of 80, according to the Academy of American Poets.

Strand died at his daughter's home in Brooklyn, New York on Saturday, the academy said in statement posted on Twitter. Strand formerly served on the academy's board of chancellors.

Strand won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his collection of poems published in a book called Blizzard of One. He won numerous other awards and served as the nation's poet laureate in 1990-1991.

"Mark Strand was recognized as one of the premier American poets of his generation as well as an accomplished editor, translator, and prose writer," the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, said in a website posting after Strand's death.

The foundation said Strand used precise language and surreal imagery and that his later works focused on self-examination with "pointed, often urbane wit."

Strand was born in Canada, raised in the United States and Mexico and published his first book, Sleeping with One Eye Open, in 1964, according to the Poetry Foundation.

Strand taught at several colleges over the years, including Columbia University in New York, the foundation said.