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
believe limits language
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.
feelings burial
The burial of feelings has begun.
writing creative program
Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.
fate destiny dumb
Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
writing want stuff
There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.
engagement bores
I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me.
reading government world
If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.
writing thinking people
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.
time stress fresh-start
Each moment is a place you've never been.
silence shadow sun
When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.
poetry
Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.
real giving demand
Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.
art life-is made
A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
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.