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.

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.

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.

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

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.

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.

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

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It’s one of the great things poetry does.

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

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.