Carolina QuotesThe 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 Carolinian
Source
"A Sad Heart at the Supermarket," Daedalus, vol. 89, no. 2 (Spring 1960); published in A Sad Heart at the Supermarket (1962)
- year
- 1960
Cite this record
“The climate of our culture is changing. Under these new rain…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-8C63150355. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/8c63150355
More from Randall Jarrell
Once man was tossed about helplessly and incessantly by the wind that blew through him — now the toughest of all plants is more sensitive, more easily moved than he. In other words, death is better than life, nothing is better than anything. Nor is this a silly adolescent pessimism peculiar to Housman, as so many critics assure you. It is better to be dead than alive, best of all never to have been born — said a poet approvingly advertised as seeing life steadily and seeing it whole; and if I began an anthology of such quotations there it would take me a long time to finish. The attitude is obviously inadequate and just as obviously important.
When you call people we you find it easy to be unfair to them, since you yourself are included in the condemnation.
Auden is able to set up a We (whom he identifies himself with — rejection loves company) in opposition to the enemy They...