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Mark Strand Quotes

Mark Strand was 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. Wikipedia  

✵ 11. April 1934 – 29. November 2014  •  Other names مارک استرند
Mark Strand photo
Mark Strand: 14 quotes1 like

Famous Mark Strand Quotes

“Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.”

Mark Strand

Source: Selected Poems

“In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.”

Mark Strand

Source: New Selected Poems

“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.”

Mark Strand

Source: Selected Poems

“Each moment is a place
you've never been.”

Mark Strand

Source: New Selected Poems

“When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.”

Mark Strand

"Keeping Things Whole" (1969)
Source: Selected Poems
Context: p>In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.</p

Mark Strand Quotes

“We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.”

Mark Strand

“These wrinkles are nothing
These gray hairs are nothing,
This stomach which sags
with old food, these bruised
and swollen ankles,
my darkening brain,
they are nothing.
I am the same boy
my mother used to kiss.”

Mark Strand

“I think a poet's focus is not quite what a prose writer's is, it's not entirely on the world outside. It's fixed on the area where the inside meets the outside, where the poet's sensibility meets the weather, meets the street, meets other people… that shadow land between self and reality.”

Mark Strand

Paris Review Interview (1998)

“I delay typing as long as possible. When I read a poem in longhand I'm hearing it, when in typescript I'm reading it. A poem can appear finished just because of the cleanness of the typescript.”

Mark Strand

Paris Review Interview (1998)

“The elements I need to write are a place, a desk, a familiar room. I need some of my books there, I need quiet. … I'm picturing as I'm writing. I'm putting together what I need to have this thing alive.”

Mark Strand

Paris Review Interview (1998)

“I don't know where it comes from. I think some of it comes from the unconscious. Sometimes it is more complete than other times.”

Mark Strand

Paris Review Interview (1998)

“A poem releases itself, it does it with cadence.”

Mark Strand

Paris Review Interview (1998)

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