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"Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry."
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"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry."

"Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep."

"Poetry. i am not writing it.(make way for me please)it is my skin. dripping with light."

"Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice. Justice worketh only within the bonds of things as they are... and therefore though Justice is itself good and desireth no further evil, it can but perpetuate the evil that was, and doth not prevent it from the bearing of fruit in sorrow."

"Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words."

"I can write no stately proemAs a prelude to my lay;From a poet to a poemI would dare to say.For if of these fallen petalsOne to you seem fair,Love will waft it till it settlesOn your hair.And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand."

"The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is."

"Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence."
Explore more quotes by Robert Morgan

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

"Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed."

"The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new."
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