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A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.

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
Elevated
Sufficiently
Poetry
Unless
Courses
Course
Art
Made

More quotes by Mark Strand

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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 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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Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
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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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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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From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
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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.
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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To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
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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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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A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what it is to be. It allows us to have the life we are denied because we are too busy living. Even more paradoxically, poetry permits us to live in ourselves as if we were just out of reach of ourselves.
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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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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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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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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
Mark Strand
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The future is always beginning now.
Mark Strand
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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.
Mark Strand
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Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.
Mark Strand