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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
Editor
Poet
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Writer
Shadows
Shadow
Sun
Walk
Silence
Walks
Like
Barges

More quotes by Mark Strand

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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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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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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
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I have been eating poetry.
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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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It's very hard to write humor.
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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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From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
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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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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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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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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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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 haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
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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.
Mark Strand
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And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.
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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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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.
Mark Strand