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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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