I is for immortality, which for some poets is a necessary compensation. Presumably miserable in this life, they will be remembered when the rest of us are long forgotten. None of them asks about the quality of that remembrance--what it will be like to crouch in the dim hallways of somebody's mind until the moment of recollection occurs, or to be lifted off suddenly and forever into the pastures of obscurity. Most poets know better than to concern themselves with such things. They know the chances are better than good that their poems will die when they do and never be heard of again, that they'll be replaced by poems sporting a new look in a language more current. They also know that even if individual poems die, though in some cases slowly, poetry will continue: that its subjects, it constant themes, are less liable to change than fashions in language, and that this is where an alternate, less lustrous immortality might be. We all know that a poem can influence other poems, remain alive in them, just as previous poems are alive in it. Could we not say, therefore, that individual poems succeed most by encouraging revisions of themselves and inducing their own erasure? Yes, but is this immortality, or simply a purposeful way of being dead? . Mark Strand
It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
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E.m. Forster
Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay.
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Jess C. Scott
When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker downin tall grasses, and even elephantslumber after safety. When great trees fallin forests, small things recoil into silence, their senseseroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomeslight,...
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Maya Angelou
Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writersmystics, painters, troubadoursfor they teach us to see the world through different eyes.
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Jacob Nordby
Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.
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Dejan Stojanovic
More Quotes By Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.
Even this late it happens:the coming of love, the coming of light.
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
In a field I am the absenceof field. This isalways the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.
These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sagswith old food, these bruisedand swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boymy mother used to kiss.
