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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Many poets write as if they had been decerebrated, and not simply lobotomized, as a cure for their melancholia. — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
![“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/quotes/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/quotes/img-quotes/aa8/randall-jarrell-3811_aim_originality-is-everyone-s-aim-and-novel_641026.jpg)
![“Early in his life Mr. [Ezra] Pound met with strong, continued, and unintelligent opposition. If people keep opposing you when you are right, you think them fools; and after a time, right or wrong, you think them fools simply because they oppose you. Similarly, you write true things or good things…” quote by Randall Jarrell](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/5a7/randall-jarrell-3811_ends_early-in-his-life-mr-ezra-pound-met-with_359433.jpg)
