Quote

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.

Randall Jarrell

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Randall Jarrell
Age: 51 †
Born: 1914
Born: May 6
Died: 1965
Died: October 14
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Nashville
Tennessee
Habit
Mannered
Works
Brushing
Learned
Collected
Somebody
Valued
Littles
Usual
Little
Poem
Teeth
Careful
Emptier

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If poetry were nothing but texture, [Dylan] Thomas would be as good as any poet alive. The what of his poems is hardly essential to their success, and the best and most brilliantly written pieces usually say less than the worst.
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An author frequently chooses solemn or overwhelming subjects to write about he is so impressed at writing about Life and Death that he does not notice that he is saying nothing of the slightest importance about either.
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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.
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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.
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The real war poets are always war poets, peace or any time.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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The dark, uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed.
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I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
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If wishes were stories, beggars would read.
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Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence.
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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.
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Carl Becker has defined a professor as a man who thinks otherwise a scholar is a man who otherwise thinks.
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One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.
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there is in this world no line so bad that someone won't someday copy it.
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When you're young you try to be methodical and philosophical, but reality keeps breaking in.
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The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.
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Most works of art are, necessarily, bad... one suffers through the many for the few.
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