Mark Strand Quotes


"From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose."
- Mark Strand
(Related: Prose)

"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
(Related: Want, Writing)

"Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented."
- Mark Strand
(Related: 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
(Related: People, Poems, Writing)

"The future is always beginning now."
- Mark Strand
(Related: Beginning, Future, Now)

"Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler."
- Mark Strand
(Related: Poetry, First, Language, Rest)

"Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments."
- Mark Strand
(Related: Poetry, English, Writing)

"Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure."
- Mark Strand
(Related: End, Pain, Pleasure)

"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
"I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony."
- Mark Strand
(Related: Poetry, American)

"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
(Related: Poetry, American, Personality)

"I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me."
- Mark Strand
(Related: 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
(Related: Poetry, Purpose, America)

"I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful."
- Mark Strand
(Related: 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
(Related: Poetry, Language, Limits, Tradition)

"It's very hard to write humor."
- Mark Strand
(Related: 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
(Related: Poetry, Lie, Direction, Want)

"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
(Related: 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
(Related: Poetry, Culture, 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
(Related: Blind, Self)

"Each moment is a place you've never been."
- Mark Strand
"For some of us, the less said about the way we do things the better."
- Mark Strand
"A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art."
- Mark Strand
(Related: Art, Life, 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
(Related: Poetry, People, Nothing, Writing)