A Fable For Critics

A Fable for Critics is a book-length poem by American writer James Russell Lowell, first published anonymously in 1848. The poem made fun of well-known poets and critics of the time and brought notoriety to its author.

Read more about A Fable For Critics:  Overview, Publication History, Critical Response

Famous quotes containing the words fable and/or critics:

    But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys
    As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
    Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
    That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company;
    Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
    That I am still their servant though all are underground.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Some critics are like chimneysweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from the nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing out from the top of the house, as if they had built it.
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)