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The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

David Antin

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David Antin
Art Critic
Performance Artist
Poet
Writer
the United States of America
David Abraham Antin
David Abram Antin
Always
Anxiety
Deficiencies
Ancient
Oral
Praying
Deficiency
Poet
Muse
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Help
Poets
Helping
Greek
Remember
Began

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I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.
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It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.
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While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.
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From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.
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I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.
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I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know.
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I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.
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You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.
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I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.
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When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.
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I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.
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