What is carol?

Famous quotes containing the word carol:

    Prose—it might be speculated—is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of “communication”; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider’s delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.
    —Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)

    It is not a carol of joy or glee,
    But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
    I know why the caged bird sings!
    Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)

    It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.
    —Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)