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
equality long enough
If you've been put in your place long enough you begin to act like the place.
manners frightening
To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all.
oysters pearls
Except from the Americans—but every pearl has its oyster.
crafts narrative length
The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.
mistake tired intelligent
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.
empathy waiting genius
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...