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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

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Robert Morgan
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 3
Biographer
Novelist
Poet
Hendersonville
North Carolina
Chinese
Mathematics
Translation
Poetry
Translations
Came
Sciences
Interest
Japanese
Also
Literary
Background
Backgrounds

More quotes by Robert Morgan

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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.
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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.
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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.
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I considered going to film school I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.
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Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.
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Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.
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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.
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I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.
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Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.
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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.
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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.
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It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.
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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.
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Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.
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Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.
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Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.
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