Robert Morgan Quotes

Quotes about:

• Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

  Robert Morgan

  Distance, Objectivity, Giving

  49 Copy quote

• 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, Choices, Unexpected

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Father, Personality, Excess

  10 Copy quote

• Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.

  Robert Morgan

  Attention, Definitions, Language

  4 Copy quote

• In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

  Robert Morgan

  Fiction, Language, Invisible

  6 Copy quote

• Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

  Robert Morgan

  Character, Events, Fiction

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Morgan

  Pain, Writing, Blood

  6 Copy quote

• When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.

  Robert Morgan

  Character, Thinking, Ideas

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Chinese, Mathematics, Interest

  4 Copy quote

• The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

  Robert Morgan

  Modern, Poetry Is, Watersheds

  7 Copy quote

• Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.

  Robert Morgan

  Honesty, Tough, Sense Of Humor

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Problem, Poetry Is

  7 Copy quote

• With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed.

  Robert Morgan

  Special, Details, Way

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Facts, Language, Ancient

  4 Copy quote

• The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.

  Robert Morgan

  Rhyming, Facts, Form

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Essence, Taught

  7 Copy quote

• A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

  Robert Morgan

  Discovery, Voice, Connections

  7 Copy quote

• One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.

  Robert Morgan

  Powerful, Talking, Use

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Morgan

  Reading, Writing, Decision

  5 Copy quote

• Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Southern, Narrative

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Curiosity, Way

  4 Copy quote

• Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, People, Doubt

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

  Robert Morgan

  Powerful, Writing, Southern

  16 Copy quote

• Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

  Robert Morgan

  Chinese, Important, Pounds

  4 Copy quote

• In the late 60s and early 70s, I did get interested in voices, and in narration and embodying the voice, making the poem sound like a real person talking.

  Robert Morgan

  Real, Talking, Voice

  4 Copy quote

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