Editing Randall Jarrell (section)

===Career===
Jarrell went on to teach at the [[University of Texas at Austin]] from 1939 to 1942, where he began to publish criticism and where he met his first wife, Mackie Langham. In 1942 he left the university to join the [[United States Army Air Forces]].<ref>[https://airforce.togetherweserved.com/usaf/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApps?cmd=ShadowBoxProfile&type=Person&ID=120847 Jarrell, Randall, 1st Lieutenant, USAF]</ref> According to his obituary, he "[started] as a flying cadet, [then] he later became a celestial navigation tower operator, a job title he considered the most poetic in the Air Force."<ref name="Randall Jarrell 1965">"Randall Jarrell, Poet, Killed By Car in Carolina." ''The New York Times'' 15 October 1965.</ref> His early poetry, in particular “[[The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner]],” would principally concern his wartime experiences in the Air Force.

The Jarrell obituary goes on to state that "after being discharged from the service he joined the faculty of [[Sarah Lawrence College]] in Bronxville, N.Y., for a year. During his time in New York, he also served as the temporary book review editor for [[The Nation (magazine)|''The Nation'']] magazine". Jarrell was uncomfortable living in the city and "claimed to hate New York's crowds, high cost of living, status-conscious sociability, and lack of greenery."<ref name="Burt"/> He soon left the city for the [[University of North Carolina at Greensboro|Woman's College of the University of North Carolina]] where, as an associate professor of English, he taught modern poetry and "imaginative writing".<ref name="Randall Jarrell 1965"/>

Jarrell divorced his first wife and married Mary von Schrader, a young woman whom he met at a summer writer's conference in Colorado, in 1952.<ref name="Burt"/> They first lived together while Jarrell was teaching for a term at the [[University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]]. The couple settled at [[Greensboro]] with Mary's daughters from her previous marriage. The couple also moved temporarily to Washington D.C. in 1956 when Jarrell served as the consultant in poetry at the [[Library of Congress]] (a position that later became titled Poet Laureate) for two years, returning to Greensboro and the University of North Carolina after his term ended.