John Crowe Ransom Quotations

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.

It is out of fashion in these days to look backward rather than forward. About the only American given to it is some unreconstructed Southerner, who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living.

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.

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.