Carolina QuotesI think Miss Moore was right to cut “The Steeple-Jack” — the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state — but she has cut too much... The reader may feel like saying, “Let her do as she pleases with the poem; it’s hers, isn’t it?” No; it’s much too good a poem for that, it long ago became everybody’s, and we can protest just as we could if Donatello cut off David’s left leg.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
“Her Shield”, p. 177
- work
- Poetry and the Age (1953)
- year
- 1953
- locator
- p. 177
Cite this record
“I think Miss Moore was right to cut “The Steeple-Jack” — the…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-DE25858851. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/de25858851
More from Randall Jarrell
A few weeks ago I read, in Sacheverell Sitwell, two impressive sentences: “It is my belief that I have informed myself of nearly all works of art in the known world.... I have heard most of the music of the world, and seen nearly all the paintings.” It was hard for me to believe these sentences, but I wanted Sitwell to be able to say them, liked him for having said them — I believed.
...it is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life.
...“progress”, in poetry at least, comes not so much from digesting the last age as from rejecting it altogether (or, rather, from eating a little and leaving a lot), and...the world’s dialectic is a sort of neo-Hegelian one in which one progresses not by resolving contradictions but by ignoring them.