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Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Happiness
Runs
Running
Corners
Like
Mouth
Mouths
Mines
Mine
Eating
Poetry
Ink

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When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.
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It's very hard to write humor.
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A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
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From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
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I have been eating poetry.
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We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.
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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 attention.
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She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.
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These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.
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Even this late it happens the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.
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Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
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It came to my house. It sat on my shoulders. Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours. I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.
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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
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To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
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Poetry is about slowing down. You sit and you read something, you read it again, and it reveals a little bit more, and things come to light you never could have predicted.
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I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.
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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 I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the space where my body has been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.
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And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.
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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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The future is always beginning now.
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