Carolina QuotesI 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.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Times (1993) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 391
- year
- 1993
- locator
- p. 391
Cite this record
“I think that one possible definition of our modern culture i…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-58B5EBC95C. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/58b5ebc95c
More from Randall Jarrell
At night there are no more farmers, no more farms. At night the fields dream, the fields are the forest. The boy stands looking at the fox As if, if he looked long enough — he looks at it. Or is it the fox is looking at the boy? The trees can't tell the two of them apart.
One of our universities recently made a survey of the reading habits of the American public; it decided that forty-eight percent of all Americans read, during a year, no book at all. I picture to myself that reader — that non-reader, rather; one man out of every two — and I reflect, with shame: "Our poems are too hard for him." But so, too, are Treasure Island, Peter Rabbit, pornographic novels — any book whatsoever.
...a novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it...