Quotes by David Antin - Page 1

From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.
David Antin / Poet
Entertainment
Entertainment Industry
Language
May
Protect
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I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate.
David Antin / Poet
Distinction
Unsatisfied
Quite
Distinctions
Literate
Oral
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I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.
David Antin / Poet
Fundamentals
Pursuit
Theory
Fundamental
Fundamental Questions
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Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.
David Antin / Poet
Different
Narrative
Stories
Allow
Every Time
Narratives
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My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.
David Antin / Poet
Concrete
Path
Thinking
Way
Continuous
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I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.
David Antin / Poet
Ceremony
Enough
Hebrew
Meaningless
Remember
Learned
Scarcely
Stagger
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I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.
David Antin / Poet
Format
Long
Manage
Prose
Closer
Henry
James
Laurence
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It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.
David Antin / Poet
Character
Mouths
Novel
Mouth
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I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.
David Antin / Poet
Casual
Sacred
Secular
Vernacular
Emphasize
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There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.
David Antin / Poet
Editing
Improvisation
Jazz
Jazz Improvisation
Procedures
Talks
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I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go.
David Antin / Poet
Standing
Thinking
Want
Welcome
Standing Up
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I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.
David Antin / Poet
Imagine
Remember
Writing
Hardly
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My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it.
David Antin / Poet
Audience
Entertainment
Form
Ideas
Rejection
Based
Current
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When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.
David Antin / Poet
Appreciate
Approval
Autobiography
Husband
Mother
Presented
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I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.
David Antin / Poet
Feelings
Liberty
Personal Liberty
Statue Of Liberty
Strong
Strong Feeling
Became
Feeling
Personal
Statue
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You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.
David Antin / Poet
Choices
Language
Pay
Attracts
Choice
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A myth is the name of a terrible lie told by a smelly little brown person to a man in a white suit with a pair of binoculars.
David Antin / Poet
Men
Binoculars
Brown
Lying
Myth
Smelly
Terrible
White
Lie
Pair
Suit
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I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore.
David Antin / Poet
Experts
Range
Want
Audiences
Explore
Occasionally
Spoken
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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.
David Antin / Poet
Running
Dialogue
Past
Self
Inside
Skin
Constantly
Present
Oral
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There is probably no oral society that fails to mark the spatial distinction of left and right, peculiar as this distinction may be.
David Antin / Poet
Distinction
Mark
Peculiar
Spatial
Fails
Oral
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An art machine is a system whose parts when put in motion act upon each other in such a way as to cause you to see things differently
David Antin / Poet
Art
Machines
Way
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I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.
David Antin / Poet
Giving
Giving Up
Stubborn
Trying
Understanding
Understood
Everybody Else
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I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.
David Antin / Poet
Thinking
Writing
Writing Poems
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Disney made a fortune out of inventing the businessman's idea of the imaginary as the contradictory of the businessman's idea of the real.
David Antin / Poet
Contradictory
Ideas
Imaginary
Inventing
Made
Real
Disney
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I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.
David Antin / Poet
Inventor
James Watt
Newton
Thinking
Meant
Edison
Guess
James
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My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldnt understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer.
David Antin / Poet
Chickens
Mother
Widows
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My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldn't understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer.
David Antin / Poet
Widow
Chicken
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For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.
David Antin / Poet
Circles
Commonplace
Corny
Setting
Song
Centuries
Literary
Looked
Melodic
Passed
Several
Text
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Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.
David Antin / Poet
Children
Distinction
Meaningful
Phrases
Sight
Singing
Frequently
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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.
David Antin / Poet
Damn
Dog
Giving
Stories
Walks
Reserve
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The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.
David Antin / Poet
Entertainment
Greece
Paradoxical
Pieces
World
Debates
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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.
David Antin / Poet
Reading
Reduced
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I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.
David Antin / Poet
Committed
Composing
Filmmaker
Kind
Process
Together
Apart
Experimental
Putting
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While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.
David Antin / Poet
Giving
Performers
Precision
Taste
Thinking
Use
George
Script
Underlying
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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.
David Antin / Poet
Ancient
Memories
Muse
Praying
Remember
Began
Deficiencies
Help
Oral
Poets
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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.
David Antin / Poet
Anxiety
Greek
Memories
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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.
David Antin / Poet
Casual
Fluency
Growing Up
Language
Transparent
Languages
Colored
Develop
Grow Up
Seem
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I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know.
David Antin / Poet
Kids
College
Ideas
Needed
No Idea
Me Know Why
Fernando
Private
San
Valley
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I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.
David Antin / Poet
Believe
Focus
Providing
Thinking
Engage
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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.
David Antin / Poet
Distaste
Modern Poetry
Song
Speech
Thinking
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David Antin Quotes - Page 1

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