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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.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Boys
Ankles
Food
Bruised
Brain
Wrinkles
Mother
Stomach
Used
Gray
Nothing
Kiss
Darkening
Kissing
Hairs
Hair
Swollen

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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 haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
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I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.
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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
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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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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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A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
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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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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 decent world.
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I don't really think it will make much difference to me when I'm dead whether I'm read or not . . . just as whether I'm dead or not won't mean much to me when I'm dead.
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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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Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
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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.
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I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.
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Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
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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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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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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
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