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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
Every
Head
World
State
Humane
Hours
Official
Reading
Officials
States
Decent
Government
Spent
Live
Hour
Much
Poetry

More quotes by Mark Strand

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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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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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...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
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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.
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.
Mark Strand
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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
Mark Strand
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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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Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.
Mark Strand
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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.
Mark Strand
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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
Mark Strand
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Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
Mark Strand
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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
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It's very hard to write humor.
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.
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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In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.
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?
Mark Strand
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The future is always beginning now.
Mark Strand
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I have been eating poetry.
Mark Strand
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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.
Mark Strand