Mark Strand

Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.

— Mark Strand

I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical,

— Mark Strand

From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.

— Mark Strand

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.

— Mark Strand

For some of us, the less said about the way we do things the better.

— Mark Strand

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

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as…

— Mark Strand

I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.

— Mark Strand

The future is always beginning now.

— Mark Strand

When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.

— Mark Strand

Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.

— Mark Strand

And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate…

— Mark Strand

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

“What I had not realized then, but now know only too well, is that sparks carry within them the wish to be…

— Mark Strand

“The Hill I have come this far on my own legs, missing the bus, missing taxis, climbing always. One foot in front…

— Mark Strand

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

— Mark Strand

Nobody knows you. You are the neighbor of nothing.

— Mark Strand

The reality of a poem is a very ghostly one. It suggests, it suggests, it suggests again.

— Mark Strand

I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits…

— Mark Strand

Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.

— Mark Strand

Each moment is a place you've never been.

— Mark Strand

It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the…

— Mark Strand

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

— Mark Strand

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.

— Mark Strand

...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and…

— Mark Strand