Guess quote

Mark Strand [1934-2014] American

Rank: 105
Poet

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.

Poetry, Future, Humor

Quote	Tags	Rank
The future is always beginning now.	Future	101
Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.	Poetry	102
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.	Poetry	103
Each moment is a place you've never been.		104
Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.		105
But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.		106
There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.		107
Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.	Poetry	108
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.	Poetry	109
I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.		110
For some of us, the less said about the way we do things the better.		111
A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.	Poetry	112
Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.	Poetry	113
I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.	Poetry	114
I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me.		115
From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.		116
And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.	Poetry	117
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.	Poetry	118
The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can be surmised from the stacks of submissions.		119
Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.		120
It's very hard to write humor.	Humor	121
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.		122
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.		123
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.		124
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.		125

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