Carolina QuotesMost poets, most good poets even, no longer have the heart to write about what is most terrible in the world of the present: the bombs waiting beside the rockets, the hundreds of millions staring into the temporary shelter of their television sets, the decline of the West that seems less a decline than the fall preceding an explosion.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
“Fifty Years of American Poetry”, pp. 332–333
- work
- The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
- year
- 1969
- locator
- pp. 332–333
Cite this record
“Most poets, most good poets even, no longer have the heart t…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-ACEFDF72CF. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/acefdf72cf
More from Randall Jarrell
“Modern” poetry is, essentially, an extension of romanticism; it is what romantic poetry wishes or finds it necessary to become. It is the end product of romanticism, all past and no future; it is impossible to go further by any extrapolation of the process by which we have arrived, and certainly it is impossible to remain where we are — who could endure a century of transition?
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Gertrude Johnson could feel no real respect for, no real interest in, anybody who wasn't a writer. For her there were two species: writers and people; and the writers were really people, and the people weren't.