A poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Many poets write as if they had been decerebrated, and not simply lobotomized, as a cure for their melancholia. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
“The tags' chain stirs with the wind; and I sleep Paid, dead, and a soldier. Who fights for his own life Loses,… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
I simply don't want the poems mixed up with my life or opinions or picture or any other regrettable concomitants. I look… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
The usual bad poem in somebody's Collected Works is a learned, mannered, valued habit, a habit a little more careful than, and… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
If you look at the world with parted lips and a pure heart, and will the good, won't that make a true… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine- tenths of our intellectuals… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit,… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
If poetry were nothing but texture, [Dylan] Thomas would be as good as any poet alive. The what of his poems is… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Robert Frost says in a piece of homely doggerel that he has hoped wisdom could be not only Attic but Laconic, Boeotian… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy. Everything in the philosophical poem has to satisfy irreconcilable requirements: for instance, the last demand… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
If my tone is mocking, the tone of someone accustomed to helplessness, this is natural: the poet is a condemned man for… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Few poets have made a more interesting rhetoric out of just fooling around: turning things upside down, looking at them from under… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Nowadays when a poet with one privately printed book can have his next three years taken care of by a Guggenheim fellowship,… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
I shook myself; I was dreaming. As I went to bed the words of the eighth-grade class's teacher, when the class got… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Modern" poetry is, essentially, an extension of romanticism; it is what romantic poetry wishes or finds it necessary to become. It is… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Imagism was a reductio ad absurdum of one or two tendencies of romanticism, such a beautifully and finally absurd one that it… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
There are some good things and some fantastic ones in Auden's early attitude; if the reader calls it a muddle I shall… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
I don't need to praise anything so justly famous as Frost's observation of and empathy with everything in Nature from a hornet… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
“Someties it is hard to criticize, one wants only to chronicle. The good and mediocre books come in from week to week,… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
originality" is everyone's aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T.S.] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté:… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Some of Mr. Gregory's poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker ; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Both in verse and in prose [Karl] Shapiro loves, partly out of indignation and partly out of sheer mischievousness, to tell the… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Most poets, most good poets even, no longer have the heart to write about what is most terrible in the world of… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
I think Miss Moore was right to cut "The Steeple-Jack" - the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state but… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
“She helped the hunter with the cooking as a husband helps his wife: when he had gone out to hunt and left something to… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
We read our mail and counted up our missions In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has never needed to think… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
“The tags' chain stirs with the wind; and I sleep Paid, dead, and a soldier. Who fights for his own life Loses, loses: I… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
First one gets works of art, then criticism of them, then criticism of the criticism, and, finally, a book on The Literary Situation ,… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Early in his life Mr. [Ezra] Pound met with strong, continued, and unintelligent opposition. If people keep opposing you when you are right, you… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Some of Mr. Gregory's poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker ; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the informed and… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
One Whitman is miracle enough, and when he comes again it will be the end of the world. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Robert Frost says in a piece of homely doggerel that he has hoped wisdom could be not only Attic but Laconic, Boeotian even -… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Most people don't listen to classical music at all, but to rock-and-roll or hillbilly songs or some album named Music To Listen To Music… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
![“If poetry were nothing but texture, [Dylan] Thomas would be as good as any poet alive. The what of his poems is hardly essential to their success, and the best and most brilliantly written pieces usually say less than the worst.” quote by Randall Jarrell](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/060/randall-jarrell-3811_alive_if-poetry-were-nothing-but-texture-dylan_995207.jpg)
![“originality" is everyone's aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T.S.] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté: "It is exactly as wasteful for a poet to do what has been done already as for a biologist to rediscover Mendel's discoveries.” quote by Randall Jarrell](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/aa8/randall-jarrell-3811_aim_originality-is-everyone-s-aim-and-novel_641026.png)
![“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…” quote by Randall Jarrell](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/a12/randall-jarrell-3811_always-crying_both-in-verse-and-in-prose-karl-shapiro_1665278.png)
