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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.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Government
Spent
Live
Hour
Much
Poetry
Every
Head
World
State
Humane
Hours
Official
Reading
Officials
States
Decent

More quotes by Mark Strand

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When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.
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Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
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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 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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Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. 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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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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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.
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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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From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
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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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I have been eating poetry.
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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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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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Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
Mark Strand
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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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A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
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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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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
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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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