Carolina QuotesMany a writer has spent his life putting his favorite words in all the places they belong; but how many, like [E.E.] Cummings, have spent their lives putting their favorite words in all the places they don’t belong, thus discovering many effects that no one had even realized were possible?
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
“Fifty Years of American Poetry”, p. 320
- work
- The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
- year
- 1969
- locator
- p. 320
Cite this record
“Many a writer has spent his life putting his favorite words …” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-C51AC3F65E. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/c51ac3f65e
More from Randall Jarrell
Critics disagree about almost every quality of a writer’s work; and when some agree about a quality, they disagree about whether it is to be praised or blamed, nurtured or rooted out. After enough criticism the writer is covered with lipstick and bruises, and the two are surprisingly evenly distributed.
She would have come from Paradise and complained to God that the apple wasn’t a winesap at all, but a great big pulpy Washington Delicious; and after the Ark she would have said that there had not been the animals, the spring rains, and the nice long ocean-voyage the prospectus from the travel agency had led her to expect — and that she had been most disappointed at not finding on Mount Ararat Prometheus.
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.