Quotes from Mark Strand

Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.

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.

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.

There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.

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

The future is always beginning now.

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.

Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.

If a man finishes a poem,he shall bathe in the blank wake of his passionand be kissed by white paper.

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.

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.

Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

The future is always beginning now.

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.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

If a man publicly denounces poetry,His shoes will fill with urine.

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.

It's very hard to write humor.

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

Nobody knows you. You are the neighbor of nothing.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

Now you invent the boat of your flesh and set it upon the watersand drift in the gradual swell, in the laboring salt.Now you look down. The waters of childhood are there.