Quotes from Mark Strand

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.

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.

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.

Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems, And what is invisible stays that way.

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.

You want to get a good look at yourself. You stand before a mirror, you take off your jacket, unbutton your shirt, open your belt, unzip your fly. The outer clothing falls from you. You take off your shoes and socks, baring your feet. You remove your underwear. At a loss, you examine the mirror. There you are. You are not there.

The ultimate self-effacement is not the pretense of the minimal, but the jocular considerations of the maximal in the manner of Wallace Stevens.

A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what it is like to be. It allows us to have the life we are denied because we are too busy living. Even more paradoxically, a poem permits us to live in ourselves as if we were just out of reach of ourselves.

And what does it matter when light enters the room where a child sleeps and the waking mother, opening her eyes, wishes more than anything to be unwakened by what she cannot name?

I jump from a building As if I were falling asleep, The wind like a pillow Slowing me down, Slowing me down As if I were dreaming. Surrounded by air, I come to a stop, And stand like a tourist Watching the pigeons. People in offices, Wanting to save me, Open their mouths. 'Throw me a stone,' I yell, Wanting to fall. But nobody listens. They throw me a rope. And now I am walking, Taking to you, Talking to you As if I were dreaming I were alive.

And into the close and mirrored catacombs of sleep We'll fall, and there in the faded light discover the bones, The dust, the bitter remains of someone who might have been                     Had we not taken his place.

How can I sing? Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same. I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

I grow into my death. My life is small and getting smaller. The world is green. Nothing is all.

Nobody sees it happening, but the architecture of our time Is becoming the architecture of the next time.

So many silent battles are waged By those who sit alone and wait, and by those who delay.

Life should be more Than the body's weight working itself from room to room.

I would go out under the stars and enter the smallness of being that was mine, and I would disappear into the emptiness within, and it seemed enormous.

For soon the leaves, Having gone black, would fall, and the annulling snow Would pillow the walk, and we, with shovels in hand, would meet, Bow, and scrape the sidewalk clean. What else would there be This late in the day for us but desire to make amends And start again, the sun's compassion as it disappears.

Tell me, you people out there, what is poetry anyway? Can anyone die without even a little?

The graves grow deeper. The dead are more dead each night. Under the elms and the rain of leaves, The graves grow deeper. The dark folds of the wind Cover the ground. The night is cold. The leaves are swept against the stones. The dead are more dead each night. A starless dark embraces them. Their faces dim. We cannot remember them Clearly enough. We never will.

You don't read a poem to find the meaning of life. The opposite. I mean, you'd be foolish to. Now, some American poets present the reader with a slice of life, saying, I went to the store today, and I saw a man, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both knew we were … thieves. And aren't we all thieves? You know, this is extracting from everyday experience a statement about life, or a moral.

And yet Nothing here is certain;

Snowfall" Watching snow cover the ground, cover itself, cover everything that is not you, you see it is the downward drift of light upon the sound of air sweeping away the air, it is the fall of moments into moments, the burial of sleep, the down of winter, the negative of night.

this is the mirror in which pain is asleep this is the country nobody visits