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
Powerful
Geologic
Word
Distort
Actually
Atomic
Human
Devices
Humans
Unexpected
Sometimes
Accomplish
Time
Choice
Choices

More quotes by 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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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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Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.
Robert Morgan
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Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.
Robert Morgan
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Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.
Robert Morgan
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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.
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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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.
Robert Morgan
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The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.
Robert Morgan
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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.
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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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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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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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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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
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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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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
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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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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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I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.
Robert Morgan