David Antin
David Antin
David Antinis an American poet, critic and performance artist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 February 1932
CountryUnited States of America
fundamentals pursuit theory
I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.
distinction unsatisfied
I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate.
memories anxiety greek
The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember.
giving-up understanding trying
I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.
song thinking speech
While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.
dog giving stories
I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out.
song circles corny
For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.
thinking want welcome
I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go.
remember hebrew enough
I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.
sacred casual secular
I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.
long format prose
I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.
kids college ideas
I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know.
writing thinking writing-poems
I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.
writing remember imagine
I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.