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

Categorized in : Way Writing Curiosity

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

chinese important pounds

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.

voice real talking

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 past thinking

I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else.

cities new-york long

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.

mtv rock-and-roll rocks

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.

enjoyment these-days thinking

I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood.

pain writing blood

The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse wil... by Robert Morgan

The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.

rhyming form facts

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.

decision reading writing

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.

young-writers bedtime stories

Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.

sense-of-humor tough honesty

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.

way art thinking

The Black Mountain poet I like most is the early Creeley. Those early poems seem very lyrical and very traditional, with a lot of voice and character.

hiking voice character

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.

powerful use talking

With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed.

details special way