John Crowe Ransom Quotes
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And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.
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And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.
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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.
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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.
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Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.
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When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.
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Two evils, monstrous either one apart,Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,And in the wood the furious winter blowing.
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Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents.
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The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?
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And weeping fast as she had breathJanet implored us, 'Wake her from her sleep!'And would not be instructed in how deepWas the forgetful kingdom of death.
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It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things.
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But we moderns are impatient and destructive.
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And a wandering beauty is a blade out of its scabbard.You know how dangerous, gentlemen of threescore?May you know it yet ten more.
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Their free verse was no form at all, yet it made history.
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For I could tell you a story which is true;I know a lady with a terrible tongue,Blear eyes fallen from blue,All her perfections tarnished-and yet it is not longSince she was lovelier than any of you.
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Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree.Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills,The delight of her husbands, her aunts, an infant of three,And of medicos marveling sweetly on her ills.
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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.
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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.