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

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Robert Morgan
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 3
Biographer
Novelist
Poet
Hendersonville
North Carolina
Time
Choice
Choices
Powerful
Geologic
Word
Distort
Actually
Atomic
Human
Devices
Humans
Unexpected
Sometimes
Accomplish

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The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.
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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.
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Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.
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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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In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.
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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.
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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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Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.
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I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.
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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.
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We don't want to live in the dark moods of imponderable mystery, but neither do we want to miss them altogether. they allow us to emerge from the tender sadness of the manger to sing with the angels in the skies above.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.
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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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Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.
Robert Morgan