"I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction"
About this Quote
The subtext is about stamina and scale. Fiction asks for long, sustained immersion: a world held in the mind for months, sometimes years. Poetry can be written in smaller bursts, but it also allows a lifetime of experience to be compressed into something closer to an afterimage. For a man whose professional life was built around action, hierarchy, and external consequence, poetry offers a late-life form that privileges interior consequence: memory, regret, moral accounting, the residue of things done and witnessed.
The age markers matter. "60s and 70s" suggests not just retirement but a reckoning period, when the body starts setting terms and the past grows louder than the present. Coming from someone identified first as a soldier, the statement reads like a gentle demobilization: an expectation that the narrative drive of youth (plot, momentum, conquest) gives way to lyric attention (fragment, silence, ambiguity). It works because it doesn’t romanticize that turn. It treats art the way a veteran might treat weather: you adapt, you choose the gear you can still wear, and you learn to speak in the kind of sentences that survive the cold.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Morgan, Robert. (2026, January 17). I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-that-its-more-likely-that-in-my-60s-and-58166/
Chicago Style
Morgan, Robert. "I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-that-its-more-likely-that-in-my-60s-and-58166/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-that-its-more-likely-that-in-my-60s-and-58166/. Accessed 17 Feb. 2026.


