Mark Strand Quotes

Poetry itself hasn't been well served by poets who fled to the margins.

Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

The only nice poets I've ever met were bad poets, and a bad poet is not a poet at all - ergo, I've never met a nice poet.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

If, at a party, I say I'm a poet, people have a hard time responding, almost as if I'd said I'm a priest.

I love form, but I'm not interested in forms. I've never written a sonnet or villanelle or sestina or any of that. For me, it's a kind of line. It's a rhythm. It's something musical.

A poet's cultural baggage and erudition can interfere with a poem.

I did literature at university, so I had a real relationship with poetry, but they don't make many films about the world of a poet.

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

I'd kill to be a poet.

The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say.

In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.

I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

I didn't want to deal in poetry. I got rid of that after a few months.

I shall, in due time, be a Poet.