It came to my house. It sat on my shoulders. Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours. I have carried it with me too long. I give it back. Mark Strand More Quotes by Mark Strand More Quotes From 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 kissing mother boys In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. Mark Strand fields missing absence From the shadow of domes in the city of domes, Mark Strand shadow cities book When we walk in the sun Mark Strand shadow silence sun ...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one. Mark Strand errors language self I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me. Mark Strand bores engagement How those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the shadow of the seagull vanished without a trace. Was it the end of a season, the end of a life? Was it so long ago it seems it might never have been? What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and longs for the past? (from "No Words Can Describe It") Mark Strand long-ago fire past 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. Mark Strand true-life courses facts 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. Mark Strand language limits believe Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented. Mark Strand poetic poetry I don't really think it will make much difference to me when I'm dead whether I'm read or not . . . just as whether I'm dead or not won't mean much to me when I'm dead. Mark Strand differences mean thinking Poetry is about slowing down. You sit and you read something, you read it again, and it reveals a little bit more, and things come to light you never could have predicted. Mark Strand slow-down light littles Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention. Mark Strand prove writing attention To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing. Mark Strand dictionary I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical. Mark Strand skeptical mets heaven I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream. Mark Strand mainstream-society culture america 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. Mark Strand form shapes believe
