Mark Strand

"In a field I am the absence of field. This 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 spaces where my body's been.We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole."

"A poem releases itself, it does it with cadence."

"I don't know where it comes from. I think some of it comes from the unconscious. Sometimes it is more complete than other times."

"I think a poet's focus is not quite what a prose writer's is, it's not entirely on the world outside. It's fixed on the area where the inside meets the outside, where the poet's sensibility meets the weather, meets the street, meets other people... that shadow land between self and reality."

"The elements I need to write are a place, a desk, a familiar room. I need some of my books there, I need quiet. ... I'm picturing as I'm writing. I'm putting together what I need to have this thing alive."

"I delay typing as long as possible. When I read a poem in longhand I'm hearing it, when in typescript I'm reading it. A poem can appear finished just because of the cleanness of the typescript."

"Full interview with Wallace Shawn"