I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me. — 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
Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention. — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
The reality of a poem is a very ghostly one. It suggests, it suggests, it suggests again. — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony. — 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,… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments. — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits… — 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… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want,… — 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… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose.… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
“ The Coming of Light Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art. — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can be surmised from… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
And Robert Lowell, of course - in his poems, we're not located in his actual life. We're located more in the externals,… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
“ My Name Once when the lawn was a golden green and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials in the… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
“ Lines for Winter" Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking,… — Mark Strand Copy Share Image
“I is for immortality, which for some poets is a necessary compensation. Presumably miserable in this life, they will be remembered when… — 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
