Jarrell, Randall (Vol. 6) | Jarrell, Randall 1914–1965
Jarrell, Randall 1914–1965
Jarrell was an American poet whose extensive knowledge of American history, world literature, and the universal problems of war, informed all of his poetry. John Crowe Ransom said that Jarrell had "an angel's velocity and range with language." Some poems—"The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner," "Jews at Haifa," and many others—are, as another critic wrote, "almost more than the reader can take at first glance; there is such intensity … that the heart is moved long before the mind can appreciate the poet's skill." Jarrell also wrote penetrating and very readable literary criticism and the novel Pictures from an Institution. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.; obituary, Vols. 25-28.)
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...
[The entire page is 3256 words long]
Navigate
