"I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale"
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Morgan’s line reads like a field manual for memory: time isn’t just a backdrop in poetry, it’s a weapon you can aim. Coming from a soldier, the obsession with “different time frames” feels less like a classroom exercise and more like lived necessity. War fractures chronology. There’s the before, the during, the after - and then the strange mental crossfire where all three keep happening at once. His claim that “a very careful choice of words” can “evoke an era” isn’t decorative craft talk; it’s about how language can smuggle an entire historical atmosphere into the present tense.
The intent is precise: to remind poets that diction carries a timestamp. A single anachronistic word can collapse the illusion; a single period-specific phrase can raise it. “Throw the poem into a different time scale” hints at control, almost tactical control, over the reader’s perception. Time becomes elastic, something you can compress or expand through rhythm, register, and detail. That’s why it works: it flatters the reader’s historical instincts while also manipulating them, inviting us to feel the past as texture rather than fact.
The subtext is that eras aren’t neutral. To evoke an era is to summon its power relations, its fears, its moral weather. A soldier knows the cost of getting the “time” wrong - the wrong assumptions, the wrong story, the wrong enemy. Morgan is arguing that poetry can do what official histories often can’t: make time experiential, not merely sequential.
The intent is precise: to remind poets that diction carries a timestamp. A single anachronistic word can collapse the illusion; a single period-specific phrase can raise it. “Throw the poem into a different time scale” hints at control, almost tactical control, over the reader’s perception. Time becomes elastic, something you can compress or expand through rhythm, register, and detail. That’s why it works: it flatters the reader’s historical instincts while also manipulating them, inviting us to feel the past as texture rather than fact.
The subtext is that eras aren’t neutral. To evoke an era is to summon its power relations, its fears, its moral weather. A soldier knows the cost of getting the “time” wrong - the wrong assumptions, the wrong story, the wrong enemy. Morgan is arguing that poetry can do what official histories often can’t: make time experiential, not merely sequential.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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