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.
Mark StrandAnd 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.
Mark StrandA life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
Mark StrandIn a field I am the absence of field.That is always the case. Wherever I am, I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the space where my body has been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.
Mark StrandHow those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the shadow of the seagull vanished without a trace. Was it the end of a season, the end of a life? Was it so long ago it seems it might never have been? What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and longs for the past? (from "No Words Can Describe It")
Mark Strand