Robert Morgan famous quotes

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.
-- Robert Morgan

#Distance #Objectivity #Giving

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.
-- Robert Morgan

#Rocks #Mtv #Rock And Roll

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

#Encouragement #Ideas #Pay

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.
-- Robert Morgan

#Writing #Thinking #Creative

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.
-- Robert Morgan

#Writing #School #Film

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

#Doe #Modern #Categorization

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.
-- Robert Morgan

#Book #Home #Use

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

Neither of my parents has been very sensitive about my writing.
-- Robert Morgan

#Writing #Parent #Sensitive

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

#Writing #People #Doubt

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.
-- Robert Morgan

#People #Labels #Use

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.
-- Robert Morgan

#Writing #Southern #Narrative

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

#Book #Three #Mature

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

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 #Past #Thinking

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 #Cities #Long

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.
-- Robert Morgan

#Fiction #Language #Invisible

If people associate me with a region, that's fine with me.
-- Robert Morgan

#People #Fine

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

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

#Philosophical #Language #Preoccupation

A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.
-- Robert Morgan

#Asian #Watches #Alive

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

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.
-- Robert Morgan

#Discovery #Long #Interesting

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

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.
-- Robert Morgan

#Character #Events #Fiction

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.
-- Robert Morgan

#Teaching #Thinking #Kind

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

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.
-- Robert Morgan

#Writing #Thinking #Fiction

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