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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.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Nothing
Worthwhile
Many
Poetry
Great
Pay
Writing
Seem
Even
Though
Think
Read
Thinking
Next
Widely
People
Seems
Pays

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I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
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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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The future is always beginning now.
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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
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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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Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.
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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
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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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Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
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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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To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
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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.
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