Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people. "
Robert Morgan
Well
Known
People
Related Quotes:
" Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry. "
Robert Morgan
Important
Over
Writing
" I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale. "
Robert Morgan
Time
You
Words
" Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start. "
Robert Morgan
Off
Family
Young
" One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice. "
Robert Morgan
Powerful
Choice
Unexpected
" Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that. "
Robert Morgan
Writing
Example
Powerful
" I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry. "
Robert Morgan
You
Teach
Taught
" You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does. "
Robert Morgan
Great
Back
Deep
" I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else. "
Robert Morgan
New York
Special
City
" I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery. "
Robert Morgan
Love
Language
You Can Do It
" If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable. "
Robert Morgan
Memorable
Wrong
Free
" I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do. "
Robert Morgan
Curiosity
Life
Myself
" I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation. "
Robert Morgan
Interest
Through
Poetry
" I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that. "
Robert Morgan
Writing
Think
Past
" The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English. "
Robert Morgan
More
Modern
English
" The Black Mountain poet I like most is the early Creeley. Those early poems seem very lyrical and very traditional, with a lot of voice and character. "
Robert Morgan
Black
Voice
Mountain
" I encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt. "
Robert Morgan
Stereotypes
Students
Dirt
" I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess. "
Robert Morgan
Driven
Personality
Returning
" What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it. "
Robert Morgan
Define
See
Poetry
" Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later. "
Robert Morgan
Important
The Most Important
Poetry
" Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast. "
Robert Morgan
See
Size
Poetry
" Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners. "
Robert Morgan
American
Best
Enjoyment
" I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction. "
Robert Morgan
More
Than
Think
" The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged. "
Robert Morgan
Three
Best
Books
" Neither of my parents has been very sensitive about my writing. "
Robert Morgan
Been
Writing
Sensitive
" Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques. "
Robert Morgan
Reflect
Famous
Values
" Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there. "
Robert Morgan
Find
First
Young
" Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back. "
Robert Morgan
Poetry
Love
Authority
" With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed. "
Robert Morgan
Own
Details
You
" I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems. "
Robert Morgan
Love
You
Sit
" It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience. "
Robert Morgan
Create
Experience
You