Mark Strand: Quotes

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

Each moment is a place you've never been.

 

The future is always beginning now.

 

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.

 

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.

 

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.

 

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

 

It's very hard to write humor.

 

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.

 

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.