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Quote by Randall Jarrell

“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.”

Quote by Randall Jarrell

Author

Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell was an influential American poet, born on May 6, 1914, and died on October 14, 1965. His poetry is known for its profound emotion and unique style, considered a significant representative of American poetry in the 20th century. more

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“If you look at the world with parted lips and a pure heart, and will the good, won't that make a true and beautiful poem? One's heart tells one that it will; and one's heart is wrong. There is no direct road to Parnassus.”

Ifs World Looks Heart Beautiful Pure Direct Lips Pure Heart

Author:Randall Jarrell

“Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence.”

Humans Form Animal Existence Human Life Poetry Is

Author:Randall Jarrell

“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.”

Ifs Doe Matter Helping Reading Poet Habit Clarity Obscurity

Author:Randall Jarrell

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

World Ends Enough Miracle End Of The World

Author:Randall Jarrell

“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.”

Should Firsts Philosophy Play Lasts Interesting Air Poet Demand Machines Philosophical Flying Absurd Mediums Instance Piano Poetry Is Requirements Tanks Sewing Forlorn Methodical

Author:Randall Jarrell

“The usual bad poem in somebody's Collected Works is a learned, mannered, valued habit, a habit a little more careful than, and little emptier than, brushing one's teeth.”

Littles Habit Careful Teeth Usual Brushing

Author:Randall Jarrell

“If you never look just wrong to your contemporaries you will never look just right to posterity - every writer has to try to be, to some extent, sometimes, a law unto himself.”

Ifs Trying Looks Sometimes Law Posterity

Author:Randall Jarrell

“The Southern past, the Southern present, the Southern future, concentrated into Gertrude's voice, became one of red clay pine-barrens, of chain-gang camps, of housewives dressed in flour sacks who stare all day dully down into dirty sinks.”

Past Voice Red Chains Dirty Staring Camps Southern Clay Gang Housewife Flour Gertrude

Book:Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

Source: Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

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

People Animal Beast Farms Gertrude

Book:Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

Source: Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

“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.”

Knows Men Republican Intellectual Defined

Book:A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables

Source: A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables