Randall Jarrell Summary

Biography EssayBest known for his poetry of World War II and his incisive, memorably witty criticism, Randall Jarrell belonged to the second generation of American modernist poets. Like Robert Lowell ... Read more

Best known for his poetry of World War II and his incisive, memorably witty criticism, Randall Jarrell belonged to the second generation of American modernist poets. Like Robert Lowell and John Berrym... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert Lowell [Randall Jarrell is a poet] whose wit, pathos, and grace remind us more of Pope or Matthew Arnold than of any of his contemporaries. I don't know whether Jarrell... Read more

Critical Essay by M. L. Rosenthal In [Jarrell's] poems there is at times a false current of sentimental condescension toward his subjects, especially when they are female. But more often anothe... Read more

In the following review of Blood for a Stranger, Cowley enumerates Jarrell's debts to various poets from W. B. Yeats to Hart Crane, while admiring the strengths of his verse. In reviewing the n... Read more

In the following essay, Quinn traces Jarrell's poetic development through his depiction of landscape in verse. Landscapes exist in the mind long after they stop being present to the eye. In bot... Read more

In the following review of The Complete Poems, Carruth appraises Jarrell's poetic sensibility and works, observing that his war poems are his finest and that in them Jarrell successfully leaps ... Read more

In the following essay, Mazzaro views Jarrell as a talented but secondary poet, and draws analogies between his status and that of Matthew Arnold. In his lifetime Randall Jarrell found his poetry cons... Read more

In the following essay, Nitchie presents a personal appraisal of Jarrell's poetry that emphasizes the poet's humanity. I never met Randall Jarrell; and I can imagine someone, in about 18... Read more

In the following excerpt, originally delivered as a lecture in 1942, Jarrell explains his aesthetics of poetic structure, emphasizing temporality, a struggle of opposites, and a dialectical tension of... Read more

In the following essay, Bottoms stresses the enduring appeal of Jarrell's poetry. I I first encountered the poetry of Randall Jarrell in a freshman literature class at Mercer University. The te... Read more

In the following essay, Chappell illuminates the figure of the alienated child in Jarrell's verse. It is the dread question the interviewer never fails to ask: “Why did you become a writ... Read more

In the following essay, Hammer chronicles Jarrell's career as a postwar American poet, concentrating on his attempts to reassess the poetic values of his generation. Even twenty-five years afte... Read more

In the following essay, Travisano remarks on Jarrell's 1942 lecture “Levels and Opposites: Structure in Poetry” (first published in 1996), and discusses his status as a literary c... Read more

In the following review of Losses, Graham finds the poems of Jarrell's third collection banal, incidental, vague, and disappointing. Mr. Randall Jarrell's name as a poet and critic is on... Read more

In the following essay, the critics elucidate the allusions, ironies, and balance of “hopefulness and utter despair” in Jarrell's poem “The Emancipators.” In introdu... Read more

In the following review of The Woman at the Washington Zoo, Hall faults Jarrell for poetic sentimentality, even when it is combined with brutality. Randall Jarrell is not incompetent. He doesn'... Read more