The Complete Poems

by Randall Jarrell

Jarrell, Randall. The Complete Poems. Second printing. New York, Farrarm Straus & Giroux, 1969. 13 cm x 20,5 cm. XVI, 507 pages. Original Softcover. Very good condition with some minor signs of external wear. From the library of swiss - american - irish poet Chuck Kruger. With his stamp to front free endpaper. Occasional markings and annotations in the text. Contains among others the following A Girl in a Library; A Country Life; The Knight, Death, and the Devil; The Face; Lady Bates; When I Was Home Last Christmas; A Conversation with the Devil; Nollekens; Seele im Raum; The Night before the Night before Christmas etc.

Genres: Poetry, American, Literature, Fiction, Classics, 20th Century

507 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1981

About the author

Poems, published in collections such as Little Friend, Little Friend (1945), of American poet and critic Randall Jarrell concern war, loneliness, and art.

He wrote eight books of poetry, five anthologies, a novel, Pictures from an Institution . Maurice Sendak illustrated his four books for children, and he translated Faust: Part I and The Three Sisters , which the studio of actors performed on Broadway; he also translated two other works. He received the National Book Award for poetry in 1960, served as poet laureate at the Library of Congress in 1957 and 1958, and taught for many years at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He joined as a member of the American institute of arts and letters.

Reviews

[D Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Randall Jarrell was known, and in many ways feared, as a brilliantly incisive and sometimes harsh critic of literature who would tear to pieces work he didn't like... then in 1963, after an especially vicious review of his own most recent book appeared in the New York Times, he slashed his wrist. Two years later, he died in an accident that many of his closest friends thought was actually a suicide. Granted, there were other issues involved, but I've always had the nagging feeling that there was some sort of moral lesson in this story. It reads like a parable on the dangers of harshness.

I have to admit that I wasn't a huge fan before, and now after rereading, I can honestly say I stand by my original assessment. Jarrell is clearly intelligent and infused with literary knowledge, but for me the standard and fashionable mid-century pessimism is just too much. It's wonderful to declare one's self a pacifist, but it might be nice to also mention that fighting Hitler and the Nazis is not exactly a moral misstep either. His pacifism is so didactic and generic that it comes off simply as a backdrop for dark and pessimistic poetry rather than as a thorough and thoughtful analysis of the situation-- World War Two, which was probably the noblest and most necessary war of the 20th century.

Unlike Whitman, O'Hara, and others, I rarely sense any joy, wonder, or gratitude ever coming from Jarrell. I can never shake the feeling that his poetry is telling us that life is simply not very good or enjoyable, which leaves me with the double dilemma of the feeling that his main themes concern war as a terrible and sad waste of human life, but that even without war, Life is mostly sad and terrible anyway. Sorry, but that's a hard sell for me.

I rate the book 3 stars out of respect for his skill as a poet, despite the fact that I don't enjoy his temperament or content.

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Book is essential for my research. Pages on poet's war experience are the best among american war poetry. There's no such american poet who managed to touch upon the whole spectrum of war-images and themes the way Jarrell did. I'd recomend "Blood for a Stranger" (1942) and "Little Friend, Little Friend" (1945).

[A.M. Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Complete Poems The Complete Poems by Randall Jarrell


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."

'The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner' World War II poem by Randall Jarrell

This week, a prolonged comment exchange with Josh Lanyon, brought me back to my 'home base' - i.e. 20th century poets, especially 20th century American poets. I've decided to babble about them for a few months, choosing one poet each week. I'm posting these psuedo 'reviews' on my blog as well.

I chose Randall Jarrell as my first poet, because he was a reknowned critic as well. I consider him the bar to which all critics and reviewers of literature should aspire. Firstly because poetry is extremely difficult to critique. Usually, the critic is reduced to some sort of opinionated diatribe. "I liked this poem because" sounding like a fifteen year old essayist. Or "so-and-so's lyrical blah blah , masking confusion in a litany of terms that really say nothing.

Jarrell seemed able to understand what the poet was trying to accomplish and to point out where he/she had both failed and succeeded in this attempt. Awesome, useful amazing critiques.He was also an outspoken pacifist and a friend of most of the contemporary American poets of note. (a small circle of alternately supportive and critical literary giants. a very very very small circle. You and I would never be invited to their parties.) Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, to name a few.

Jarrell's note to the poem above

A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24,
and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small
man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his
bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his
little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which
attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a
steam hose.

I also chose Jarrell because he didn't survive the depression, alcoholism and despair that seems to have been the fate of so many poets in the past. His death, hit by a car while out walking, was officially ruled an accident but was generally felt, by those that knew him, to be a suicide.

It is my belief that 20th century poets began to 'get a grip' and more and more of them fought hard to survive with their sensibilities intact.

Jarrell was, obviously, a pacifist. He spent time in prison as a concientous objector and wrote two books of poems based on his stay there. All of his poems and quite a few of his best critiques are in this 'complete works'. He wrote poems that stuck in the head of anyone and the poem above has been used and quoted in many anti war and pacifist books and pamphlets.

View all my reviews >>

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still my favorite American poet, for Deutch durch Freud, Woman at the Washington Zoo, and so on.

[Elizabeth du Fresne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I studied this poet while I was at Vanderbilt and had two of his books on my shelves. Something
Brought him to my attention recently, and so I decided to give his complete works a go. He stands up very well. It had been over 50 years since I had read him and he still spoke to me quietly but to the emotional point.

[Adam Roll · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible talent who made some interesting p.o.v. decisions that might distance some readers. I loved his work about children and the imaginary landscapes of myth. I started this book long ago in a class and I was happy to return and complete it as an exercise in thoroughness.

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for The Lost Children
By Randall Jarrell

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful illustrations of depression. some good poems about war, like “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” very abstract at times.

“ Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.”

[Bud Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the war poems best. Especially the Death of the Ball Turret Gunner which reads as follows:

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

I first found that poem in my 8th grade English book and it was the first poem I loved and made me realize I wanted to read more. I went to Barnes and Noble and bought this book. On a whole there are some great poems and then there are some filler/so so poems.

Here's another war poem
I really liked:

Eighth Air Force

Randall Jarrell, 1969

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,
A puppy laps the water from a can
Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving
Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man
Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;
Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one
Lies counting missions, lies there sweating
Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.
O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done:

This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,
Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,
I did as these have done, but did not die--
I will content the people as I can
And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,
Many things; for this last saviour, man,
I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying?
Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My heart, wide open
As my own disordered shutters,
Beats in senseless circles, to the breath
Of the most fantastic gusts.”
—Randall Jarrell, “Le Poete Contumace”

The same could be said of most of Jarrell’s early poems in this collection, which are marked by a consciousness so wide open to multiple dimensions that the poems seem like disordered stutters; a heart so broken that words and rhythms beat in senseless circles; an imagination so susceptible “to the breath of the most fantastic gusts” that many poems seem incomprehensible. Yet Jarrell’s later work demonstrates a lucidity that earned his reputation as a major poet of his generation, especially his bracing ruminations on World War II. “The Woman at the Washington Zoo” is a tour de force.

Favorite Poems:
“A Utopian Journey”
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”
“Losses”
“Transient Barracks”
“Siegfried”
“A Pilot from the Carrier”
“Pilots, Man Your Planes”
“The Dead Wingman”
“Mail Call”
“1945: The Death of the Gods”
“A Camp in the Prussian Forest”
“The Woman at the Washington Zoo”

[Ian]

This is the definitive volume of Randall Jarrell's verse, including Selected Poems, with notes by the author; The Woman at the Washington Zoo, which won the National Book Award for Poetry; and The Lost World. This volume also brings together several of Jarrell's uncollected or posthumously published poems as well as his Rilke translations.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of terrific poems here. Some filler. It's a big book with some big poems, and it shows Jarrell as a poet with a scope for the entire 20th Century, equally adept in free verse or in more formal attire, as someone able to write in personae or confessionally. I read it in bursts to allow the poems to settle, the voices not to blur.

[Gary McDowell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my bag, babe.

[Sudarsan]

I have been reading Jarrell for the past year and he completely eludes me, hence no rating, but don't let this dissuade you from taking a stab at Jarrell.

[Gwern · Rating 1 out of 5]

Moved to gwern.net.