Many poets write as if they had been decerebrated, and not simply lobotomized, as a cure for their melancholia. Randall Jarrell More Quotes by Randall Jarrell More Quotes From Randall Jarrell 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 lightningpoetrymen One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. Randall Jarrell wisdomchildrenfacts The ways we miss our lives are life. Randall Jarrell our-livesmissingway most of the people in a war never fight for even a minute though they bear for years and die forever. They do not fight, but only starve, only suffer, only die: the sum of all this passive misery is that great activity, War. Randall Jarrell fightingwaryears Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain. Randall Jarrell paindarknesshurt 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. Randall Jarrell heartwritingfall We can't tell our life from our wish Randall Jarrell our-liveswish It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad. Randall Jarrell poetpoetrybelieve I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness - that darkness flung me - Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain. Randall Jarrell painignorancewisdom The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Randall Jarrell yellowbirthdaypeople Read at whim! Read at whim! Randall Jarrell whimhappiness The dark, uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed. Randall Jarrell succeeddarkworld Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because it is life itself. Randall Jarrell ornamentsoccupationart Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has never needed to think twice about anything. His works are the mad scene from Giselle , on ice skates: he weeps, pulls out his hair holding his wrists like Lifar and tells you what Life is, all at a gliding forty miles an hour. Randall Jarrell hairartthinking Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence. Randall Jarrell human-lifeformanimal 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. Randall Jarrell voicepastdirty The safest way to avoid the world is through art; and the safest way to be linked to the world is through art. Randall Jarrell wayworldart If you've been put in your place long enough you begin to act like the place. Randall Jarrell equalityenoughlong Modern" poetry is, essentially, an extension of romanticism; it is what romantic poetry wishes or finds it necessary to become. It is the end product of romanticism, all past and no future; it is impossible to go further by any extrapolation of the process by which we have arrived, and certainly it is impossible to remain where we are who could endure a century of transition ? Randall Jarrell transitionwishpast 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. Randall Jarrell chinesedecisionage
