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

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

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

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

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

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.
Robert Morgan

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.
Robert Morgan

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

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