Family

In "The Continuous Life," Strand seems to suggest that the idea of the nuclear family, in which each member has a specific role to play to support the unit and keep it intact, is rooted in fear, distrust, and dishonesty. In the opening lines, the speaker describes children waiting for their parents to give up, exhausted from their daily domestic duties. He presents parents as being beaten down and defeated, who have to force themselves to believe things about their lives and their futures merely to keep going. He also describes the relationship between the two as beset by miscommunication and concealment of information about how to survive in the world. In much of his poetry, Strand has sought to dismantle the myth of the family and to expose its more sinister qualities. Influenced by the writings of R. D. Laing, poems such as "The Dreadful Has Already...