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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.

Robert Morgan

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Robert Morgan
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 3
Biographer
Novelist
Poet
Hendersonville
North Carolina
Young
Since
Find
Almost
Take
Start
Family
Everyone
Often
Bedtime
Place
Writers
Stories
Subjects

More quotes by Robert Morgan

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We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.
Robert Morgan
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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.
Robert Morgan
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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.
Robert Morgan
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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.
Robert Morgan
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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.
Robert Morgan
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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
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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.
Robert Morgan
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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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Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.
Robert Morgan
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Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.
Robert Morgan
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The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.
Robert Morgan
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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.
Robert Morgan
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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.
Robert Morgan
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Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.
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.
Robert Morgan
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Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.
Robert Morgan
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Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.
Robert Morgan
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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
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The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.
Robert Morgan
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Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.
Robert Morgan