From the beginning, Mark Strand's work caught the attention and won the praise of critics and readers of poetry in general. His distinct style and odd subject matter were the major draw. The first two books, Sleeping With One Eye Open and Reasons for Moving, established his reputation as a poet caught up in morbidity and death, as well as self-absorption most often expressed through dreamlike events. That he was able to write clear, concise, brief poems that opened up a very complex world of distortions for the reader was a credit to his talent as a poet. Critic David Kirby, in his Mark Strand and the Poet's Place in Contemporary Culture, states that, "Many poems in Strand's first book show an uneasy preoccupation with the serf, and the vehicle used to express that preoccupation is often a dream state in which the speaker is divided...