Mark Strand

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.

But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.

I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.

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.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

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.

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.

It's very hard to write humor.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

Each moment is a place you've never been.

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