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
pain poetry pleasure
Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
time stress fresh-start
Each moment is a place you've never been.
dust wind voice
No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.
self errors language
...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.
sleep sometimes ifs
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
lasts firsts language
Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
culture entertainment comfort
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.
dictionary
To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
eating has-beens
I have been eating poetry.
true-life facts journalistic
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.
feelings burial
The burial of feelings has begun.
fate destiny dumb
Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.