#so

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

#barely #blood #bring #draw #getting

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#free verse #memorable #much #poem #poetry

In the late 60s and early 70s, I did get interested in voices, and in narration and embodying the voice, making the poem sound like a real person talking. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#early #get #i #interested #late

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#discovering #elementary #experience #far #go

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#example #fiction #fiction writing #maybe #poets

One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#changes #cornell #county #ever #everybody

One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#actually #atomic #choice #devices #distort

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#famous #faulkner #make #most #our

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

— Robert Morgan

#courses #doubts #helps #i #people

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#belittle #call #even #i #know