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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
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Poet
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Notions
Conventional
Notion
Concerned
Beautiful
Truth

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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I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
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Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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The future is always beginning now.
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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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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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Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying 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.
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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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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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Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
Mark Strand
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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
Mark Strand