Pounds translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later. – Robert Morgan
You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. Its one of the great things poetry does. – Robert Morgan
I dont think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you cant teach them is the very essence of poetry. – Robert Morgan
I dont think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry. – Robert Morgan
I dont 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
What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we cant define it. – Robert Morgan
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 its timeless, that it reaches back. – Robert Morgan
I think that its more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction. – Robert Morgan
If a poem is not memorable, theres probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable. – Robert Morgan
Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery OConnor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques. – Robert Morgan
Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. Its delightful to distort size, to see something thats tiny as though it were vast. – Robert Morgan
The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English. – Robert Morgan
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
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
Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form. – Robert Morgan
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
Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry. – Robert Morgan
Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts. – Robert Morgan
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
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
