Will Morgan
Will Morgan
Will Morganis a Minnesota politician and former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, he represented District 56B, which includes portions of Dakota County in the southern Twin Cities metropolitan area. He is a physics teacher at Burnsville High School in Burnsville...
powerful choices unexpected
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.
facts language ancient
Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.
definitions attention language
Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.
teaching writing years
Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.
art years ideas
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.
long people narrative
We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.
impossible poetry-is courses
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.
character thinking ideas
When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.
firsts young-writers magazines
Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.
chinese important littles
Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.
real talking voice
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.
rocks mtv rock-and-roll
The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.
thinking these-days best-poetry
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.
writing blood students
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.