The Lost World

by Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell (Afterword)

Twenty-two poems deal with solitude, mortality, man and woman, great art, and the recapturing of childhood through memory and imagination

Genres: Poetry

69 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

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

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff here!

But, could someone please tell me how Jarrell, a MAN born in 1914 could manage to write a poem that so completely describes what it's like to be a middle-aged WOMAN?

Now that I’m old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home.

Now that I have reached the age of "invisible" womanhood, the age when men I meet pay more attention to my dog, I want to know. How'd he do that?

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

next day and the lost children.. wow

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars rounded up to 4 Stars.
Next Day - 3 Stars
The Mockingbird - 4.5 Stars
In Montecito - 2 Stars

The Lost World:
I. Children's Arms - 4 Stars
II. A Night with Lions - 3.25 Stars
III. A Street off Sunset - 4.5 Stars

A Well-to-Do Invalid - 3.5 Stars
The X-Ray Waiting Room in the Hospital - 3 Stars
In Galleries - 3 Stars
Well Water - 3 Stars
The Lost Children - 3.5 Stars
Three Bills - 2 Stars
Hope - 4 Stars
The Bird of Night - 4 Stars
Bats - 4.5 Stars
The One Who Was Different - 3 Stars
A Hunt in the Black Forest - 3 Stars
The House in the Wood - 3 Stars
Womans - 3 Stars
Washing - 3.5 Stars
In Nature There Is Neither Right nor Left nor Wrong - 2 Stars
The Old and the New Masters - 2.5 Stars
Field and Forest - 3 Stars
Thinking of the Lost World - 3.5 Stars
Randall Jarrell, 1914-1965: An Appreciation by Robert Lowell - 3 Stars

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I'm anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and
solitary.

The poems in The Lost World read as the inner monologues of a range of characters — husbands, wives, old women, animals. These sketches capture the voice and rhythm of thought without losing the melody of poetry, similar to Robert Penn Warren and other great Southern poets. Observations are underscored by realization. Jarrell was special and should be read by any fan of mid-century American poetry.

[Jonathan Bracker]

I want to like this book. When I was an English major at the University of Texas in Austin the creative writing teacher Frederick Eckman brought Randall Jarrell one day to speak to us. Jarrell impressed me by his alert warmth and enthusiasm.

I have written poetry for 65 years now, and I love good poems and poets. I have wanted to like Jarrell. A few of his earlier poems I liked a lot. "Next Day" when I read it in The New Yorker struck me as a masterpiece that was immensely moving.

But the poems in this book do not work for me. They seem to me to be a man talking to himself. And he seems to be talking rather than composing poems.

I know this is subjective of me, and I am sure some readers will like the poems in this last collection of Jarrell's work. But I would not recommend the book except perhaps to poets, to ponder what not to do. I am sorry to say this, but that is how I feel and think about it. Reading the book has made me feel quite sad and, to use a word from my childhood [I am 84], "icky". The fact that Jarrell evidently committed suicide before he was 60, also saddens me.

[Alex Wexelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that's at times opaque and abstract and at times grounded and narrative, The Lost World is the last collection of poems that Randall Jarrell put out before committing suicide in 1965. A major theme pervades the works: that of innocence and the passage of time. Jarell often inhabits the voice of naive children or everyday women. He seems to desperately want to claw his way back into Eden. The centerpiece is the three-part poem from which the collection takes its name. In it, Jarrell reminisces about his childhood—how he liked to read and how he respected animals. He recalls a primal scene in which his mother killed a chicken by snapping its neck. The moribund bird ran around in circles and evidently haunts Jarrell all these years later. The poet mentions the incident once again in "Washing" and in "Field and Forest" a fox eats a chicken, though this may be unrelated. Perhaps the fall he wishes to bypass is this, the day he saw death firsthand.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flows easy sometimes, sometimes difficult. But mostly rewarding, always meaningful, though the meanings can often be vague and obscure. In many of the poems he speaks as a woman, from the point of view of woman, a wife, a mother; in some, perhaps, as himself, a man, a husband, a father, a child.

"When you take off everything what's left? A wish,
A blind wish; and yet the wish isn't blind,
What the wish wants to see, it sees."

[Sean]

The standout for me: "A Well-to-Do Invalid"

[Lidia Colavita · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When you take off everything what’s left? A wish,
A blind wish; and yet the wish isn’t blind,
What the wish wants to see, it sees.”

- from “Field and Forest”

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not hearing the music with this one. I can't match the poetry with Lowell's eloquent afterward (titled "an appreciation"). I had high hopes, since I think Jarrell's much anthologized "Ball Turret Gunner" poem is terrific. The title poem (or series of poems), "Lost World" is good, more approachable and warmer than Lowell's similar "Life Studies." "Next Day" is also good, as is "Bats." My favorite in the bunch was probably the strange fairy tale like "A Hunt in the Black Forest." But there are others I simply didn't know what was going on, or worse, after a few attempts at reading -- didn't care. And the rhythms throughout were the reading equivalent of speed bumps. I could never reach a comfort level, and was always thinking what else could I be reading? A big disappointment.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a flawless book--what collection of poetry is?--but a very good one, very smart, smartly conceived, full of emotion. Childhood memories, fairy tale imagery, dramatic monologues. Very much better than almost anything likely to be published this year.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oddly touching.

[Dan Ust · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best poem in the book is "Next Day," which I was already very familiar with. I found most of the rest tough going. I'll have to revisit them.

[Sam Mauro · Rating 2 out of 5]

49/100