Life & Wisdom Quote by Mark Strand

Strand is quietly flipping the usual complaint on its head. Writers love to say poetry is hard to write; he’s insisting it’s hard to read, and not because it’s obscure or elitist, but because it asks more of your attention per square inch. Prose can carry you on plot, argument, or momentum. A poem strips away that conveyor belt. Without the long runway of narrative, the reader has to supply more: patience, inference, a tolerance for silence, a willingness to sit with ambiguity instead of chasing resolution.

The line also defends poetry against the charge of being “impractical.” If it’s demanding, it’s because it’s doing a different kind of work. Poems compress meaning into rhythm, image, and sonic pattern; they make every word perform double duty. That compression turns reading into a kind of collaboration. You don’t just receive information; you negotiate it. You reread. You notice how a line break changes logic, how a metaphor rewires emotion, how a pause becomes part of the meaning.

Context matters: Strand emerged as a major American poet in a postwar landscape where poetry often felt caught between academic specialization and mass-market indifference. His remark doubles as a cultural diagnosis. Modern life trains readers for speed and extraction; poetry trains the opposite muscle, the one that lingers. Calling it “demanding” isn’t a scold. It’s a reminder that difficulty can be a form of intimacy, and that the poem’s real subject may be the attention you’re willing to give it.