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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.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Life
Short
Pay
Lucky
Almost
Essayists
Attention
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Born
Obliged
Think
Accident
Thinking
Accidents

More quotes by Mark Strand

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Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.
Mark Strand
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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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A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
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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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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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I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
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The future is always beginning now.
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It's very hard to write humor.
Mark Strand
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When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.
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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
Mark Strand
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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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Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
Mark Strand
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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.
Mark Strand
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From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
Mark Strand
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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
Mark Strand
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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.
Mark Strand
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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
Mark Strand
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Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.
Mark Strand
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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.
Mark Strand