Randall Jarrell - (1914-1965)
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San Pedro High School in San Pedro, California
Read another essay on Randall Jarrell written by North Carolina student
Aleta Metzler.I. Biography
Randall Jarrell was born May 6, 1914, in Nashville, Tennessee. Jarrell's father, Owen, was from a working class family in Shelbyville, Tennessee, and his mother, Anna, was from a business family in Nashville. When Jarrell was one year old his family moved to Los Angeles. His father found work in the photography business. His mother was in a way a super housewife. It is said that she never kept leftovers, she constantly remodeled the house and that she was a perfectionist in the kitchen. Unfortunately, her lifestyle and his father's payroll could not peacefully coexist. The family moved to Long Beach in a futile attempt to fix their problems. It did not work and with no one to turn to (her entire family was in Tennessee) Anna became ill. Soon Jarrell's parents divorced and Jarrell and his only brother moved back to Tennessee with their mother.
After a little time in Tennessee, Jarrell took a long trip back to California to live with his grandparents and great-grandmother. While staying with them in Hollywood he often visited his father whom he obtained a good relationship with. He was very happy in California and he would return many times.
Jarrell returned to Nashville in 1927 to attend Hume-Fogg High School. In 1931 he graduated high school and in 1932 he began college at Vanderbilt University. He attended Vanderbilt until 1937 when him and his close friend, John Crowe Ransom, left for Kenyon College. At Kenyon, Robert Lowell, who he also became close friends with, talked Jarrell to stay a year at Kenyon College then he moved on to teaching at the University of Texas. There he met Mackie Langham (also worked in the English Department) whom he married the following year, 1940. From 1942 to 1946 he was a member of the United States Military.
In 1951, Jarrell and Langham broke up. That same summer, while in California, Jarrell met Mary von Schrader. The following year, 1952, they wed. He spent the rest of his life teaching or reading. People say he led a dull and "uneventful" life, that is, until his death. On October 14, 1965, Jarrell was hit and killed by a car on a dark highway in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At the same time he was undergoing physical therapy on a wrist he injured months earlier in a suicide attempt. Some believe he deliberately threw himself in front of a car and that his death was a suicide.
Jarrell often talked about things being inevitable like the breakup with his wife, but he always had a large sense of guilt. He also had very strong morals. He never spoke of improper subjects or told racial jokes. In public his friends were, "either corrected, ignored, or expected to loudly agree." He had similar behaviors with women. He demanded that his women were engulfed in his concerns. He did not feel that his mother gave him enough attention as a child. She would divide her attention between him and his younger brother and Jarrell saw that as a sign of betrayal.
II. Professional Life
Jarrell began his career as a teacher at Kenyon College. He taught there from 1937 to 1939 then he moved on to teach at the University of Texas.
After publishing his first book, Blood for a Stranger , in 1942, Jarrell joined the army. In the letters he wrote home he seemed confined and dreary. He wrote that flying was like a long exam and how the promise of being free in the air was untrue. He also wrote that the bulk of the army was, "helplessly ignorant and determined." After becoming a control tower operator he began to write about pilots, navigators, and gunners. One such poem, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is probably his most famous.
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.
In 1946, Jarrell left the army. He then received an invitation from Margaret Marshall to replace her as editor in chief of The Nation during her leave of absence. He promptly accepted and he continued to work there until 1947. After his work at The Nation he accepted a teaching position at UNC Greensboro (then known as The Women's College of the University of North Carolina). He remained on the faculty there until his death in 1965.
While on leave from the University, Jarrell went to teach at Princeton in 1951. The year of 1951 was the same year Jarrell changed wives. In that year he also published his fourth book, Seven-League Crutches.
Jarrell returned to Greensboro in 1953, the year he published his only novel, Pictures from an Institution, a satire about a life at a women's college. In 1956 Jarrell served as Poetry Consultant at the Library of Congress. He did little writing there. In 1961 Jarrell received The National Book Award for poetry for his poem, Woman at the Washington Zoo.
Besides being a poet Jarrell was a well-known literary essayist and one of the most famous and feared poetry critics of his time. He wrote revered critiques about the poetry of Robert Frost and other very well known poets.
III. Influences
Family: (influenced his lifestyle) Mother - Tennessee and California; Father - Mostly California; Grandparents - California; Great Grandmother - California
Army Life: Most of his poetry is related to military life. While working as a control tower operator he wrote about the lives of pilots, navigators, and gunners. His second book is written about the fears and struggles of young soldiers.
John Crowe Ransom: Served in WW1. He was the editor in chief of The Kenyon Review at Kenyon College. The topic for his writing was often the unavoidable decay of humans.
Robert Lowell: A fellow student at Kenyon University. He was completely against war in any form. He often wrote against WW2 and the Vietnam War. He was imprisoned for his displays against the war.
IV. Works by Jarrell
Books of Poetry
The Rage for the Lost Penny (1940)
Blood for a Stranger (1942)
Little Friend, Little Friend (1945)
Losses (1948)
The Seven-League Crutches (1951)
Selected Poems (1955)
The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1960)
The Lost World (1965)
The Complete Poems of Jarrell
Essays
"Poetry and the Age" (1953)
"A Sad Heart at the Supermarket" (1962)
"The Essays and Criticisms of Jarrell"
Fiction
Pictures from an Institution (1954)
Children's Books
The Gingerbread Rabbit (1964)
The Bat-Poet (1964)
The Animal Family (1965)
Fly by Night
Translations
The Golden Bird and Other Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
The Rabbit Catcher and other Fairy Tale of Ludwig Bechstein (1962)
The Three Sisters
Faust, Part 1
Anthologies
The Anchor Book of Stories (1958)
The Best Short Stories of Rudyard Kipling (1961)
The English in England (Kipling stories) (1963)
In the Vernacular: The English in India (Kipling stories) (1963)
Six Russian Short Novel (1963)
Modern Poetry: An Anthology
V. Bibliography
Lowell, Robert. Peter Taylor, Robert Penn Warren. "Jarrell 1914-1965" (1967)
Pritchard, William H. "Jarrell A Literary Life" (1990)
Rosenthal, M.L. "Jarrell" (1972)
Original manuscripts of Randall Jarrell:
Recording of Jarrell reading his poem "Next Day": http://www.poets.org/LIT/POET/rjarrfst.htm
This essay was submitted by a student of Kathy Honda Stein, a teacher at San Pedro High School in San Pedro California.