J. D. McClatchy Quotes

United States, Literary Critic
April 12, 1945 – April, 10, 2018.

J. D. "Sandy" McClatchy (August 12, 1945 – April 10, 2018)[1] was an American poet and literary critic. He was editor of the Yale Review and president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Also known as Poet

At least since Darwin's day, we have known that all of us originally emerged from the sea. That fact may account for our abiding fascination with it, our longing to return there, whether to sail the main or merely contemplate its restless enormity.

J. D. McClatchy
- May
- Sea
- Fascination
To shelter and to hide, they have resigned themselves.

J. D. McClatchy
- Forests
- Shelter
- Resigned

The best criticism is the sort that tells you what you already know but had been reluctant to accuse yourself of.

J. D. McClatchy
No poem should be an urn to contain a meaning, but a net to catch what meanings float through the day.

J. D. McClatchy
- Should
- Floats
Novelists want to flood, poets want to distill.

J. D. McClatchy
- Want
- Poet
- Novelists
A poem needs disguises. It needs secrets. It thrives on the tension between what is said and not said; it prefers the oblique, the implied, the ironic, the suggestive; when it speaks, it wants you to lean forward a little to overhear; it wants you to understand things only years later.

J. D. McClatchy
- Years
- Secret
- Ironic