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Quote by Randall Jarrell

“Many poets write as if they had been decerebrated, and not simply lobotomized, as a cure for their melancholia.”

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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

“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.”

Long Dream Girl Class Boys Teacher Baby Bed Pages Ears Lays Grades Counting Boy And Girl Eighth Grade

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

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

“You give me the feeling that the universe Was made by something more than human For something less than human. But I identify myself, as always, With something that there's something wrong with, With something human.”

Giving Humans Made Feelings Universe Give Me

Book:The Lost World

Source: The Lost World

“One of the most puzzling things about a novel is that "the way it really was" half the time is, and half the time isn't, the way it ought to be in the novel.”

Way Half Novel Ought Puzzling

Author:Randall Jarrell

“The best of causes ruins as quickly as the worst; and the road to Limbo is paved with writers who have done everything I am being sympathetic, not satiric for the very best reasons.”

Reason Done Causes Worst Ruins Sympathetic Limbo

Author:Randall Jarrell

“Most poets, most good poets even, no longer have the heart to write about what is most terrible in the world of the present: the bombs waiting beside the rockets, the hundreds of millions staring into the temporary shelter of their television sets, the decline of the West that seems less a decline than the fall preceding an explosion.”

World Writing Heart Seems Fall Waiting Millions Television Poet Terrible West Staring Bombs Temporary Decline Shelter Explosions Rockets

Author: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”

People Ifs Thinking Writing Ends Strong Fool Mets Good Things Opposition Pounds Opposing Unintelligent True Things

Author:Randall Jarrell

“Some of Mr. Gregory's poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker ; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the informed and casual smartness, the flat fashionable irony, meaningless because it proceeds from a frame of reference whose amorphous superiority is the most definite thing about it they are the trademark not simply of a magazine but of a class.”

Class Magazines Irony Flats Meaningless Definite Superiority Casual Fashionable New Yorkers Trademarks Smartness Frame Of Reference

Author:Randall Jarrell

“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.”

Has Beens States Done Novel Poet Discovery Aim Technique Surprising Originality Biologist Scientific Discovery Vets Eliot Mendel

Author:Randall Jarrell

Quote by Randall Jarrell

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