Mark Strand Thoughts

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.

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

It's very hard to write humor.

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

Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.

Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

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.

Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.

It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the poem is merely its shape.

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.