We are all so to speak intellectuals about something. Randall Jarrell More Quotes by Randall Jarrell More Quotes From Randall Jarrell Imagism was a reductio ad absurdum of one or two tendencies of romanticism, such a beautifully and finally absurd one that it is hard to believe it existed as anything but a logical construction; and what imagist found it possible to go on writing imagist poetry? A number of poets have stopped writing entirely; others, like recurring decimals, repeat the novelties they commeced with, each time less valuably than before. And there are surrealist poetry, and political poetry, and all the othe refuges of the indigent. Randall Jarrell writingtwobelieve A poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it. Randall Jarrell speakforgetway I simply don't want the poems mixed up with my life or opinions or picture or any other regrettable concomitants. I look like a bear and live in a cave; but you should worry. Randall Jarrell cavesworrylooks 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. Randall Jarrell rock-and-rollrockssong More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book alone, if they could help it, than have a baby alone. Randall Jarrell babymenbook 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? Randall Jarrell moralnovelistsmean When you're young you try to be methodical and philosophical, but reality keeps breaking in. Randall Jarrell philosophicaltryingreality If my tone is mocking, the tone of someone accustomed to helplessness, this is natural: the poet is a condemned man for whom the State will not even buy breakfast and as someone said, "If you're going to hang me, you mustn't expect to be able to intimidate me into sparing your feelings during the execution." Randall Jarrell tonefeelingsmen The climate of our culture is changing. Under these new rains, new suns, small things grow great, and what was great grows small; whole species disappear and are replaced. Randall Jarrell sunrainculture whether they write poems or don't write poems, poets are best. Randall Jarrell poetwriting Habits are happiness of a sort... Randall Jarrell habit Carl Becker has defined a professor as a man who thinks otherwise; a scholar is a man who otherwise thinks. Randall Jarrell professorsmenthinking If wishes were stories, beggars would read. Randall Jarrell beggarstorieswish First one gets works of art, then criticism of them, then criticism of the criticism, and, finally, a book on The Literary Situation , a book which tells you all about writers, critics, publishing, paperbacked books, the tendencies of the (literary) time, what sells and how much, what writers wear and drink and want, what their wives wear and drink and want, and so on. Randall Jarrell wifebookart Reality is what we want it to be or what we do not want it to be, but it is not our wanting or our not wanting that makes it so. Randall Jarrell wantreality We always tend to distrust geniuses about genius, as if what they say didn't arouse much empathy in us, or as if we were waiting till some more reliable source of information came along... Randall Jarrell empathygeniuswaiting An intelligent man said that the world felt Napoleon as a weight, and that when he died it would give a great oof of relief. This is just as true of Byron, or of such Byrons of their days as Kipling and Hemingway: after a generation or two the world is tired of being their pedestal, shakes them of with an oof, and then - hoisting onto its back a new world-figure - feels the penetrating satisfaction of having made a mistake all its own. Randall Jarrell tiredintelligentmistake I don't need to praise anything so justly famous as Frost's observation of and empathy with everything in Nature from a hornet to a hillside; and he has observed his own nature, one person's random or consequential chains of thoughts and feelings and perceptions, quite as well. (And this person, in the poems, is not the "alienated artist" cut off from everybody who isn't, yum-yum, another alienated artist; he is someone like normal people only more so - a normal person in the less common and more important sense of normal.) Randall Jarrell cuttingartistpeople We read our mail and counted up our missions In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among The people we had killed and never seen. When we lasted long enough they gave us medals; When we died they said, "Our casualties were low." They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities. Randall Jarrell girlcitiesschool When you call people we you find it easy to be unfair to them, since you yourself are included in the condemnation. Randall Jarrell unfaireasypeople
