David Antin
David Antin
David Antinis an American poet, critic and performance artist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 February 1932
CountryUnited States of America
growing-up fluency language
When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.
choices pay language
You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.
may entertainment language
From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.
attention begin books individual nobody paid structure works
Nobody has paid much attention to the structure of my books as books, probably because the individual works all begin in performance.
When I got to the reading all the work, I was reduced to being an actor in an experimental play that I'd already written. And I didn't want to be an actor.
running past self
The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.
distinction unsatisfied
I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate.
memories anxiety greek
The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember.
mother husband appreciate
When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.
giving-up understanding trying
I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.
song thinking speech
While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.
dog giving stories
I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out.
song circles corny
For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.
thinking want welcome
I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go.