David Antin (born in New York City, February 1, 1932) is an American poet, critic and performance artist. Read full biography of David Antin →
I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.
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.
Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.
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.
From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.
I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.
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.
I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.
I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore.
I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.
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... →
I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.
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 (born in New York City, February 1, 1932) is an American poet, critic and performance artist.