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.
Mark StrandRead
From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A poem requires more effort to interpret and appreciate compared to prose.
Mark Strand highlights the inherent complexity and depth of poetry, suggesting that readers must engage more actively with poems than with prose. Unlike straightforward narratives, poetry often employs nuanced language, symbolism, and varying structures, which demand a higher level of engagement, contemplation, and emotional investment from the reader.
Themes
PoemProseReadingLiteratureEngagement
In practice
Example use cases
During a literature class focusing on poetry, this quote can be introduced to explain the complexity involved in analyzing poems.
More from Mark Strand
All quotes →...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.
Mark StrandRead
Even this late it happens the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.
Mark StrandRead
No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.
Mark StrandRead
From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,_x000D_ A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room_x000D_ And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up_x000D_ From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's all_x000D_ There was to it.
Mark StrandRead
There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.
Mark StrandRead
Similar quotes
He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity.
Neil GaimanRead
It's not that the creative act and the critical act are simultaneous. It's more like you blurt something out and then analyze it.
Robert MotherwellRead
The deal is such that when I begin writing something, I open a door, and those characters come in, and then they won't leave, and so I live with them every day, all day. They are there with me when I'm driving my kids to school, when I'm standing in line at the grocery store.
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To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie— True Poems flee—
Emily DickinsonRead
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?
Edith WhartonRead
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity.
John UpdikeRead