If my tone is mocking, the tone of someone accustomed to helplessness, this is natural: the poet is a condemned man for whom the State will not even buy breakfast — and as someone said, If you’re going to hang me, you mustn’t expect to be able to intimidate me into sparing your feelings during the execution.
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About Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell was a 20th-century American writer. Randall Jarrell jə-REL was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate of the United States. Read more on Wikipedia →

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