SOURCE: Flint, R. W. “On Randall Jarrell.” Commentary 41, no. 2 (February 1966): 79-81.

In the following essay, Flint calls Jarrell “the poet of the war” and briefly surveys his World War II pieces.

Freedom, farewell! Or so the soldiers say; And all the freedoms they spent yesterday Lure from beyond the graves, a war away. The cropped skulls resonate the wistful lies Of dead civilians: truth, reason, justice; The foolish ages haunt their unaccepting eyes. 

From the green gloom of the untroubled seas Their little bones (the coral of the histories) Foam into marches, exultation, victories: Who will believe the blood curled like a moan From the soaked lips, a century from home— The slow lives sank from being like a dream? 

Randall Jarrell, who died last autumn in what seems clearly to have been a tragic accident, was in many ways the wonder and terror of American poetry during...