96 Quotes by Mark Strand

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

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.

The future is always beginning now.

Each moment is a place you’ve never been.

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

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.

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.

There’s a certain point, when you’re writing autobiographical stuff, where you don’t want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.

Poetry is, first and last, language – the rest is filler.