Mark Strand

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…

— Mark Strand

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

To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.

— Mark Strand

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs…

— Mark Strand

“The ultimate self-effacement is not the pretense of the minimal, but the jocular considerations of the maximal in the manner of Wallace…

— Mark Strand

I have been eating poetry.

— Mark Strand

“Keeping Things Whole" In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am…

— Mark Strand

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

Poetry is about slowing down. You sit and you read something, you read it again, and it reveals a little bit more,…

— Mark Strand

These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my…

— Mark Strand

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

— Mark Strand

In a field I am the absence of field.That is always the case. Wherever I am, I am what is missing. When…

— Mark Strand

Even this late it happens the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if…

— Mark Strand

Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future, of being carried away in streams of promise by…

— Mark Strand

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

— Mark Strand

I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me.

— Mark Strand

She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There…

— Mark Strand

“ The Coming of Light Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the…

— Mark Strand

A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what…

— Mark Strand

And what does it matter when light enters the room where a child sleeps and the waking mother, opening her eyes, wishes…

— Mark Strand

“You want to get a good look at yourself. You stand before a mirror, you take off your jacket, unbutton your shirt,…

— Mark Strand

Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

— Mark Strand

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want,…

— Mark Strand

“One clear night while the others slept, I climbed the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky strewn…

— Mark Strand

It came to my house. It sat on my shoulders. Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was…

— Mark Strand