Quotes by John Crowe Ransom
When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.
Their free verse was no form at all, yet it made history.
Or he can work it out as a metrical and formal exercise, but he will be disappointed in its content. The New Year's prospect fairly chills his daunting breast.
For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties.
Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous, to the mystic, when words which make sense can also make a uniform objective structure of accents and rhymes.
Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.
But we moderns are impatient and destructive.
The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?
And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.
And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.
He can develop sense and style, in the manner of distinguished modern prose, in which event he may be sure that the result will not fall into any objective form.
It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things.
The curse of hell upon the sleek upstart That got the Captain finally on his back...
Now the poor comb stood up straight But Chucky did not.
But this was the old tree's late branch wrenched away, Grieving the sapless limbs, the shorn and shaken.
Sweet ladies, long may ye bloom, and toughly I hope ye may thole, But was she not lucky? In flowers and lace and mourning,...
It was a transmogrifying bee Came droning down on Chucky's old bald head And sat and put the poison. It scarcely bled,
There was such speed in her little body, And such lightness in her footfall, It is no wonder her brown study Astonishes us all.
And weeping fast as she had breath Janet implored us, 'Wake her from her sleep!'...
This morning, there flew up the lane A timid lady-bird to our bird-bath And eyed her image dolefully as death;
Alas, ...
