"The Deserters: The Contemporary Defeat of Fiction" (1972)
“It is odd how pleasant and sympathetic her poems are, in these days when many a poet had rather walk down children like Mr. Hyde than weep over them like Swinburne, and when many a poem is gruesome occupational therapy for a poet who stays legally innocuous by means of it.”
“Poets”, pp. 212–213
Poetry and the Age (1953)
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Randall Jarrell 215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965Related quotes
National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: When a poet is being a poet — that is, when he is writing or thinking about writing — he cannot be concerned with anything but the making of a poem. If the poem is to turn out well, the poet cannot have thought of whether it will be saleable, or of what its effect on the world should be; he cannot think of whether it will bring him honor, or advance a cause, or comfort someone in sorrow. All such considerations, whether silly or generous, would be merely intrusive; for, psychologically speaking, the end of writing is the poem itself.
undated quote about his own poetry; in ' Objects Are What We Aren't' https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/02/26/objects-are-what-we-arent/, by Andy Battaglia; The Parish Review, February 26, 2015
"Answers to Questions," from Mid-Century American Poets, edited by John Ciardi, 1950 [p. 171]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
“…whether they write poems or don’t write poems, poets are best.”
“Recent Poetry”, p. 227
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
Lecture, "The Themes of Robert Frost" (1947)
“If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.”
“The poet should be responsible to the poem.”
The Poet's Poetic Responsibility (2012)
“I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.”