SOURCE: Deen, Rosemary F. Review of The Complete Poems, by Randall Jarrell. Commonweal no. 5 (18 April 1969): 146-47.

In the following review of The Complete Poems, Deen highlights Jarrell's principal poetic themes of change and judgment.

Randall Jarrell is something of a scandal to Modern poetry. One of the first generation of post-Pound/Eliot poets—the generation of Lowell, Berryman, Shapiro, Roethke—Jarrell turned away at once from Eliot's prescription for poets. Thinking of Donne, Eliot announced that the poet of our time must become “more indirect in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.” But Jarrell instead located himself firmly in the tradition of Wordsworth. He objected that the Modern tradition underemphasized “organization, logic, narrative, generalization.” In an age still trying to bring the richness of poetry to stories, Jarrell brought story and characters back into poetry. His Complete Poems show why he avoided the...