A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what it is to be. It allows us to have the life we are denied because we are too… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing. — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
“The ultimate self-effacement is not the pretense of the minimal, but the jocular considerations of the maximal in the manner of Wallace Stevens.” — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
“Keeping Things Whole" In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest. — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
Poetry is about slowing down. You sit and you read something, you read it again, and it reveals a little bit more, and things… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain,… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure. — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
In a field I am the absence of field.That is always the case. Wherever I am, I am what is missing. When I walk… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
