5 Randall Jarrell Quotes on War

Randall Jarrell quotes on war

13. From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

15. We read our mail and counted up our missions - In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school - Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among The people we had killed and never seen. When we lasted long enough they gave us medals; When we died they said, 'Our casualties were low.' They said, 'Here are the maps'; we burned the cities.

30. A farmer is separated from a farmer By what farmers have in common: forests, Those dark things - what the fields were to begin with. At night a fox comes out of the forest, eats his chickens. At night the deer come out of the forest, eat his crops.

37. The real war poets are always war poets, peace or any time.

56. What he could do in poetry he did early and with prodigious security; he was one of our true poets for thirty years and practically the only American poet able to cope with the Second Great War; many of us both younger and older would acknowledge him as a master in one degree or another. It was this gift of true pitch that made his teaching voice, his critical voice, as penetrating as it was.