Quotes: Mark Strand

"It's such a lucky accident, having been born, that we're almost obliged to pay attention." 

–– Mark Strand (1934-2014), Canadian-born American poet, essayist, translator 

Source: Brain Pickings 

via: Sketchbook 29, 2016, p. 110.

Quotes: Mark Strand

"When I read poetry, I want to feel myself suddenly larger ... in touch with – or at least close to – what I deem magical, astonishing. I want to experience a kind of wonderment. And when you report back to your own daily world after experiencing the strangeness of a world sort of recombined and reordered in the depths of a poet's soul, the world looks fresher somehow. Your daily world has been taken out of context. It has the voice of the poet written all over it, for one thing, but it also seems suddenly more alive – not as routinely there." 

–– Mark Strand (1934-2014), Canadian-born American poet, essayist, translator 

Source: The Art of Poetry No. 77

via: Sketchbook A, 2018, p. 62.