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

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
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Barges
Shadows
Shadow
Sun
Walk
Silence
Walks

More quotes by Mark Strand

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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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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
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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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To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
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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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...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.
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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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Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.
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From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
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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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The future is always beginning now.
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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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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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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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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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We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.
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