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Home
Authors
Mark Strand
American
Poet
About the author
Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Nothing
#Dumb
#Destiny
From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Prose
Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Life
The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can be surmised from the stacks of submissions.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#People
#Writing
#Poems
The future is always beginning now.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Now
#Future
#Beginning
Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#First
#Language
#Rest
#Poetry
Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Writing
#English
#Poetry
Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#End
#Pleasure
#Pain
It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the poem is merely its shape.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#American
#Poetry
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,
American
Poet
#American
#Poetry
#Personality
I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Poems
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,
American
Poet
#Purpose
#America
#Poetry
I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Truth
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,
American
Poet
#Language
#Poetry
#Tradition
#Limits
It's very hard to write humor.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Humor
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.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Want
#Poetry
#Lie
#Direction
And Robert Lowell, of course - in his poems, we're not located in his actual life. We're located more in the externals, in the journalistic facts of his life.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Life
#Facts
#Poems
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.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Culture
#Poetry
#Entertainment
But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Self
#Blind
Each moment is a place you've never been.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
For some of us, the less said about the way we do things the better.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
Mark Strand,
American
Poet
#Life
#Art
#Poetry
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,
American
Poet
#People
#Nothing
#Writing
#Poetry
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,
American
Poet
#Want
#Writing