Robert Morgan
Robert Morgan
character thinking ideas
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.
impossible poetry-is courses
What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it.
art years ideas
The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new.
teaching writing years
Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.
definitions attention language
Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.
facts language ancient
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.
powerful choices unexpected
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.
modern poetry-is watersheds
The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.
young-writers stories bedtime
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.
writing past thinking
I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.
writing thinking fiction
I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.
father personality excess
I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.
teaching thinking kind
I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.
writing thinking creative
I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.