30 Quotes by John Crowe Ransom

Tell this to ladies: how a hero manAssail a thick and scandalous giantWho casts true shadow in the sun,And die, but play no truant.This is more horrible: that the darling eggOf the chosen people hatch a creatureOf noblest mind and powerful legWho cannot fathom nor perform his nature.

Their free verse was no form at all, yet it made history.

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.

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.

The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?

It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things.

But we moderns are impatient and destructive.

And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.

And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.