Mark Strand
Mark Strand
Mark Strandwas a Canadian-born American poet, essayist and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990 and received the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004. Strand was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University from 2005 until his death in 2014...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth11 April 1934
CountryUnited States of America
lying imagination want
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.
book views reader
From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
way said
For some of us, the less said about the way we do things the better.
ends describing nothingness
Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
pain poetry pleasure
Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
moving space air
When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been.
dream stars air
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.
thinking expression self
But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.
poetry feels anything-is-possible
I feel that anything is possible in a poem.
busy imagine permit
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.
thinking attention pay
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.
love marriage couple
The future is always beginning now.
writing humor hard
It's very hard to write humor.
thinking personality triumph
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.