Mark Strand

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.

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

The future is always beginning now.

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.

There's never been anything I didn't love that I didn't connect with on a personal level because, to some degree, I projected upon it.

The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.