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Quote by Randall Jarrell

“How can we expect novelists to be moral, when their trade forces them to treat every end they meet as no more than an imperfect means to a novel?”

Quote by Randall Jarrell

Book:Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

Work

Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

This novel employs humor to depict the peculiarities and ironies within a fictional educational setting, offering a critical look at the system and its characters. more

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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“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 By.”

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

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

“Christina Stead has a Chinese say, "Our old age is perhaps life's decision about us" or, worse, the decision we have made about ourselves without ever realizing we were making it.”

Made Age Realizing Decision Old Age Chinese Christina

Author: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.”

Ifs Sometimes Seems Might Attitude Doubt Position Poet Reader Good Things Fantastic Not Sure No Doubt Clay Remarks Fertile Muddle Auden

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“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.”

Wells Ends Half Cry Hair Clothes Naked Prose Quarters Verses Sheer Emperor Indignation Half Truth Well Dressed Always Crying

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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.”

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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