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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Dumb
Fate
Destiny
Everyone
Nothing
Made

More quotes by Mark Strand

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Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.
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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
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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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Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.
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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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I have been eating poetry.
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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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The future is always beginning now.
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When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.
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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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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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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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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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And what does it matter when light enters the room where a child sleeps and the waking mother, opening her eyes, wishes more than anything to be unwakened by what she cannot name?
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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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We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.
Mark Strand
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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
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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.
Mark Strand
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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.
Mark Strand