Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrellwas an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, novelist, and the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth6 May 1914
CountryUnited States of America
writing poet cures
Many poets...write as if they had been decerebrated, and not simply lobotomized, as a cure for their melancholia.
voice age gertrude
Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices rising) with the American novelist Gertrude Johnson.
happens
Say what you like, but such things do happen - not often, but they do happen.
manners frightening
To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all.
time real war
The real war poets are always war poets, peace or any time.
crafts narrative length
The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.
pain ignorance darkness
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.
home ideas rest-of-your-life
It is better to entertain an idea than to take home to live with you for the rest of your life.
mother dream sleep
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
oysters pearls
Except from the Americans—but every pearl has its oyster.
men matter men-and-women
I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose.
intelligent dozen honest
If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.
matter world quarrels
our quarrels with the world are like our quarrels with God: no matter how right we are, we are wrong.
girl dream baby
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.