I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within

Hear now the voice of Mark Strand, who spoke with clarity and wisdom: “I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.” In this teaching we see not a restriction but a revelation. For Strand reminds us that art does not bloom in boundless chaos, but in the fertile soil of limits. Just as a river flows most powerfully when hemmed by its banks, so does poetry gain its force when shaped by the boundaries of form, custom, and tongue.

The ancients knew this well. When Homer sang his epics, he did not invent his song from formless air—he inherited the hexameter, the rhythm of his people, the weight of the tradition that bound him to generations before. When the Hebrew psalmists raised their voices to heaven, they used parallelism, repetition, and chant, structures rooted in their sacred culture. Their poetry was not weakened by these limits; it was made eternal by them. Strand’s words remind us that far from binding the poet, these boundaries give shape to vision, allowing thought to take on form that can be remembered, spoken, and carried forward.

Even the greatest innovators found their power within limits. Shakespeare, that soaring eagle of verse, worked within iambic pentameter, within rhyme, within the stage’s constraints. Yet within those walls, he built kingdoms of imagination. And when Japanese masters penned haiku, they compressed eternity into seventeen syllables. What is this but proof of Strand’s wisdom—that the strength of art comes not from endless space, but from the challenge of shaping meaning within boundaries?

There is also the deeper truth: language itself is a limit. We may feel emotions too vast for words, visions too immense for speech, yet when we write, we must bend to the tongue we are given. Words are finite; reality is infinite. This tension is what makes poetry both powerful and poignant. The poet wrestles with the inadequacy of language, shaping it as best they can, knowing it will never hold the whole truth. But within that struggle, beauty is born, for the imperfect vessel still carries enough to move the soul.

Consider the tale of Michelangelo, who said he did not carve statues but freed them from the marble. The block of stone was his limit; the chisel his form. Without the resistance of the stone, there could be no David, no Pietà. So it is with poetry: the stone is tradition and language, the chisel is form, and from within emerges a figure of beauty that could not exist without resistance. Strand’s insight is that poets, like sculptors, must embrace the limits, for they are the very conditions of creation.

This truth offers both guidance and warning. Beware those who say, “I will cast aside all form, all limit, all tradition.” They imagine themselves free, but their work dissolves into formlessness, unremembered, like sand blown by the wind. Freedom without structure is emptiness; creation requires discipline. At the same time, beware those who worship only tradition, who cling so tightly to form that the spirit cannot breathe. The balance lies between: to honor the limits but to shape them with fire, to bend tradition until it speaks anew.

The lesson is clear: do not despise limits, but embrace them. If you are a poet, study the traditions that came before you, and learn the forms of your language. Then, within those boundaries, let your spirit move. And in life itself, do not curse the walls that confine you—time, duty, body, circumstance. Instead, see them as the frame within which you may create beauty. A vase holds water because of its shape; a song is remembered because of its rhythm. So too your life will shine most brightly when its limits are embraced as gifts, not chains.

Thus Strand speaks not only of poetry, but of existence itself. All art, all life, is formal, for all life has limits. Yet within those limits, we may discover infinity. Live, then, as the poets lived: honor tradition, wrestle with language, embrace the boundaries of your being, and within them, carve something eternal.