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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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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
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Autobiographical
Dishonest
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Stuff
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More quotes by Mark Strand

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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
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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 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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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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Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.
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The future is always beginning now.
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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.
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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.
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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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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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To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
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Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.
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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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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
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And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.
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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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From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
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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