Robert Morgan Quotes

• 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.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Back, Rock

• Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fiction, Character, Places

• I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in School, Writing, Film

• 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

  Topics in Art

  Tags in Far

• 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.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Alive, Break

• A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sense, Voice

• 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.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Best, American

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Through, Interest

• Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Distance, Nostalgia

• 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.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in past, Better, Writing

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Young, Poetry, Teach

• I don’t think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing, American, Creative

• I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Words, Different, Choice

• I love chapbooks. They’re in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can’t sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Down, Read, Way

• I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Person, Kind, Learned

• I encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Far, Idea

• 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.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Long, Special

• I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Long, Language, Seems

• 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.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Tell, Write, Getting

• I think that it’s more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

  Robert Morgan

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing, Rather, Poetry

Robert Morgan (56)

Birth:	1944
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist, Poet, Writer

About

Robert Morgan studied at North Carolina State University as an engineering and mathematics major, transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an English major, graduating in 1965, and completed an MFA degree at the University of North Carolina Greensboro in 1968. He teaches at Cornell University beginning in 1971.

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Today's Anniversary - 5th January

Births

• 1862 - S H Miller
• 1948 - Ted Lange
• 1931 - Alvin Ailey
• 1947 - Mike DeWine
• 1932 - Raisa Gorbachova

Deaths

• 1998 - Sonny Bono
• 1963 - Rogers Hornsby
• 1942 - Tina Modotti
• 1988 - Pete Maravich
• 2003 - Roy Jenkins