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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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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Suspected
Dictionary
Discover
Beyond
Open
Word
Nothing

More quotes by Mark Strand

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I have been eating poetry.
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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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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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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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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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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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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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Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
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I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
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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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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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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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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
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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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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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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.
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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.
Mark Strand