I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

quote by Mark Strand
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I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.

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

quote by Mark Strand
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Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

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

quote by Mark Strand
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There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.

quote by Mark Strand
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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.

quote by Mark Strand
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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.

quote by Mark Strand
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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.

quote by Mark Strand
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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.

quote by Mark Strand
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