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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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Robert Morgan
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 3
Biographer
Novelist
Poet
Hendersonville
North Carolina
Written
Known
Read
Wells
Well
Many
Poems
Long
Narrative
People
Century

More quotes by 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.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.
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