He and Robert Lowell were brilliant but in very different ways. You had the feeling that Lowell was an intelligence; you had the feeling that Jarrell was a sensibility—that it wasn’t a matter of grand ideas or anything of that sort with Jarrell, but rather that he knew exactly what this or that choice of language meant about your qualities as a person. I remember that he once spent ten minutes talking about one line out of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—” He doesn’t dare say anything without immediately countering it by something opposite for fear someone might attack or criticize. When he says, “My necktie rich,” he’s proud of it. But then he thinks, Oh, my God, we rich people must be modest. So he says, “but modest.” Rich and modest. But then he thinks, “That’s my trouble. I’m too modest. I’ve got to learn to assert myself: ‘but asserted.’” Then he thinks, Oh, my God I can’t stand assertive people! so he adds, “by a simple pin.” And of course simple is just marvelous because it’s the farthest thing from what he is. Jarrell talked about that line for ten minutes. This was an entirely different kind of richness from what you got from Lowell. But tremendously invigorating and enlightening.
Paris Review - The Art of Poetry No. 68, W. D. Snodgrass
Posted 1 month ago
