Robert Morgan quotes - page 2

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible. (Robert Morgan)
Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places. View quote
Robert Morgan
Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form. View quote
Robert Morgan
The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse. View quote
Robert Morgan
I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
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)
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood. View quote
Robert Morgan
I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person. (Robert Morgan)
Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan
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. View quote
Robert Morgan

Robert Morgan

Occupation: American Poet
Born: October 3, 1944
Quotes count: 56