“[Kenneth Patchen] has a real, but disorganized, self-indulgent, but rather commonplace talent.
This is not Mr. Patchen’s opinion of himself. (Nor is it that of William Carlos Williams, who almost invents a new language, a kind of system of emotional nonsense syllables, in his effort to praise Mr. Patchen properly. For instance, Mr. Patchen is “a hawk on the grave of John Donne.” I should have called him a parrot on the stones of half a cemetery.)”

—  Randall Jarrell

“Poetry in a Dry Season”, p. 35
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

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Randall Jarrell 215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

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