Quotes by David Antin

About David Antin:

David Antin is an American poet, critic and performance artist.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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

David Antin

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

David Antin

My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.

David Antin

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

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

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

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

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

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

Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.

David Antin

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

Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.

David Antin

You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.

David Antin

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.

David Antin

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

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

Author Bio

  • NameDavid Antin
  • DescriptionPoet and critic
  • BornFebruary 1, 1932
  • ProfessionArt Critic; Poet; Performance Artist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship