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Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.

Mark Strand

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Mark Strand
Age: 80 †
Born: 1934
Born: April 11
Died: 2014
Died: November 29
Editor
Poet
Translator
Writer
Poetry
Attention
Makes
Writing
Really
Life
Paying
Necessary
Prove

More quotes by Mark Strand

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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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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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Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
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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From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
Mark Strand
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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
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I have been eating poetry.
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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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.
Mark Strand
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Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
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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We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.
Mark Strand
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Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
Mark Strand
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I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.
Mark Strand
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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.
Mark Strand
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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
Mark Strand
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Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
Mark Strand
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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.
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.
Mark Strand
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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