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

More quotes by 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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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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I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do.
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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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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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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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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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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Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.
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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I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.
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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Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.
Robert Morgan
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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.
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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I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.
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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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.
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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Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.
Robert Morgan