Randall Jarrell Quotes

189 Sourced Quotes

The writer does not get from his work as he writes and reads it the same aesthetic shock that the reader does; and since the writer is so accustomed to reading other stories, and having them produce a decided effect upon him, he is disquieted at not being equally affected by his own.

Randall Jarrell
... Stevens does not think of inspiration (or whatever you want to call it) as a condition of composition. He too is waiting for the spark from heaven to fall—poets have no choice about this—but he waits writing; and this—other things being equal, when it's possible, if it's possible—is the best way for a poet to wait.

Randall Jarrell
We never step twice into the same Auden.—HERACLITUS

Randall Jarrell
... a poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it...

Randall Jarrell
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 its 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
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
... when General Eisenhower defined an intellectual as a man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows, he was speaking not as a Republican but as an American.

Randall Jarrell
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, and end by thinking things true or good simply because you write them

Randall Jarrell
Is an institution always a man's shadow shortened in the sun, the lowest common denominator of everybody in it?

Randall Jarrell