The weight and concentration of the poems fall upon things (and those great things, animals and people), in their tough, laconic, un-get-pastable plainness: they have kept the stolid and dangerous inertia of the objects of the sagas — the sword that snaps, the man looking at his lopped-off leg and saying, “That was a good stroke.”

— Randall Jarrell The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

More quotes by Randall Jarrell

Poetry and the Age (1953)

Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Poetry and the Age (1953)

Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

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