Quote

No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Voice
Dust
Comes
Meant
Carpets
Tell
Wind
Folds
Happens
Knew
Carpet
Long
Happen
Outer
Way
Space
Complain
Never
Lasts
Ruins
Would
Last
Complaining

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It's very hard to write humor.
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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
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There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.
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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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A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
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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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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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To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
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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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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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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
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A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.
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Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.
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I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
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In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.
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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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The future is always beginning now.
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