David Antin Quotations

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.

I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate.

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.

When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.

I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.

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.

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.

For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.

I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.