Top 56 Quotes by 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 can't define it.

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.

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

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.

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.

Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.

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.

Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

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