Randall Jarrell Quotes - Page 4

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Underneath all his writing there is the settled determination to use certain words, to take certain attitudes, to produce a certain atmosphere; what he is seeing or thinking or feeling has hardly any influence on the way he writes. The reader can reply, ironically, "That's what it means to have a style"; but few people have so much of one, or one so obdurate that you can say of it, "It is a style that no subject can change.

Randall Jarrell

Determination, Attitude, Writing

"Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (p. 237), 1955.

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if sometimes we are bogged down in lines full of "corybulous", "hypogeum", "plangent", "irrefragably", "glozening", "tellurian", "conclamant", sometimes we are caught up in the soaring rapture of something unprecedented, absolutely individual.

Randall Jarrell

Lines, Sometimes, Individual

"The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, of Hart Crane's The Bridge, "Fifty Years of American Poetry", p. 324, 1969.

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We read our mail and counted up our missions In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among The people we had killed and never seen. When we lasted long enough they gave us medals; When we died they said, "Our casualties were low." They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.

Randall Jarrell

Girl, School, Cities

Randall Jarrell, “Losses”

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Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy. Everything in the philosophical poem has to satisfy irreconcilable requirements: for instance, the last demand that we should make of philosophy (that it be interesting) is the first we make of a poem; the philosophical poet has an elevated and methodical, but forlorn and absurd air as he works away at his flying tank, his sewing-machine that also plays the piano.

Randall Jarrell

Philosophy, Philosophical, Air

"Poetry and the Age" by Randall Jarrell, Vintage paperback, (p. 127), 1955.

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We always tend to distrust geniuses about genius, as if what they say didn't arouse much empathy in us, or as if we were waiting till some more reliable source of information came along...

Randall Jarrell

Empathy, Waiting, Genius

"A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables" by Randall Jarrell, (p. 125), 1962.

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The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.

Randall Jarrell

Art, Real, Men

"The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell,"An Unread Book", p. 20, 1969.

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I shook myself; I was dreaming. As I went to bed the words of the eighth-grade class's teacher, when the class got to Evangeline , kept echoing in my ears: "We're coming to a long poem now, boys and girls. Now don't be babies and start counting the pages." I lay there like a baby, counting the pages over and over, counting the pages.

Randall Jarrell

Girl, Dream, Baby

Randall Jarrell (1965). “A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables”

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From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell

Mother, Dream, Sleep

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" l. 1 (1945)

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And the world said, Child, you will not be missed. You are cheaper than a wrench, your back is a road; Your death is a table in a book. You had our wit, our heart was sealed to you: Man is the judgment of the world.

Randall Jarrell

Children, Book, Heart

Randall Jarrell (1956). “Selected Poems”

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Art is long, and critics are the insects of a day.

Randall Jarrell

Art, Long, Insects

Randall Jarrell (1965). “A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables”

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Say what you like, but such things do happen - not often, but they do happen.

Randall Jarrell

Happens

Randall Jarrell (1965). “A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables”

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When you're young you try to be methodical and philosophical, but reality keeps breaking in.

Randall Jarrell

Philosophical, Reality, Trying

"Poetry and the Age". Book by Randall Jarrell. Chapter: "Reflections on Wallace Stevens", p. 129, 1953.

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People had always seemed to Gertrude rather like the beasts in Animal Farm : all equally detestable, but some more equally detestable than others.

Randall Jarrell

Animal, People, Gertrude

Randall Jarrell (2010). “Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy”, p.68, University of Chicago Press

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One Whitman is miracle enough, and when he comes again it will be the end of the world.

Randall Jarrell

Miracle, World, Enough

"Poetry and the Age" by Randall Jarrell, Vintage paperback, (p. 119), 1955.

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Nowadays when a poet with one privately printed book can have his next three years taken care of by a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and the Prix de Rome, it is hard to remember what chances the poet took in that small-town world, how precariously hand-to-mouth his existence was. And yet in one way the old days were better; [Vachel] Lindsay after a while, by luck and skill, got far more readers than any poet could get today.

Randall Jarrell

Book, Taken, Rome

"The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Fifty Years of American Poetry", p. 299, 1969.

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An author frequently chooses solemn or overwhelming subjects to write about; he is so impressed at writing about Life and Death that he does not notice that he is saying nothing of the slightest importance about either.

Randall Jarrell

Writing, Life And Death, Doe

"Ten Books", The Southern Review (p. 9), 1935.

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If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.

Randall Jarrell

Reading, Doe, Obscurity

"Poetry and the Age" by Randall Jarrell, Vintage paperback, (p. 4), 1955.

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First one gets works of art, then criticism of them, then criticism of the criticism, and, finally, a book on The Literary Situation , a book which tells you all about writers, critics, publishing, paperbacked books, the tendencies of the (literary) time, what sells and how much, what writers wear and drink and want, what their wives wear and drink and want, and so on.

Randall Jarrell

Art, Book, Wife

"Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Very Graceful Are the Uses of Culture" (p. 211), 1980.

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There are some good things and some fantastic ones in Auden's early attitude; if the reader calls it a muddle I shall acquiesce, with the remark that the later position might be considered a more rarefied muddle. But poets rather specialize in muddles and I have no doubt which of the muddles was better for Auden's poetry: one was fertile and usable, the other decidedly is not. Auden sometimes seems to be saying with Henry Clay, "I had rather be right than poetry"; but I am not sure, then, that he is either.

Randall Jarrell

Attitude, Doubt, Might

"The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Changes of Attitude and Rhetoric in Auden's Poetry" (p. 131), 1969.

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How can we expect novelists to be moral, when their trade forces them to treat every end they meet as no more than an imperfect means to a novel?

Randall Jarrell

Mean, Novelists, Moral

Randall Jarrell (2010). “Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy”, p.8, University of Chicago Press

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Both in verse and in prose [Karl] Shapiro loves, partly out of indignation and partly out of sheer mischievousness, to tell the naked truths or half-truths or quarter-truths that will make anybody's hair stand on end; he is always crying: "But he hasn't any clothes on!" about an emperor who is half the time surprisingly well-dressed.

Randall Jarrell

Clothes, Hair, Naked

"The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Fifty Years of American Poetry", p. 331, 1969.

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Born: May 6, 1914
Died: October 14, 1965
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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