Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.

More Quotes by John Crowe Ransom

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

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

And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.

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

Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous, to the mystic, when words which make sense can also make a uniform objective structure of accents and rhymes.

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