Editing Randall Jarrell (section)

==Writing==

===Poetry===
In terms of the subject matter of Jarrell's work, the scholar [[Stephanie Burt]] observed, "Randall Jarrell's best-known poems are poems about the [[World War II|Second World War]], poems about bookish children and childhood, and poems, such as 'Next Day,' in the voices of aging women."<ref name="Burt"/> Burt also succinctly summarizes the essence of Jarrell's poetic style as follows: <blockquote> Jarrell's stylistic particularities have been hard for critics to hear and describe, both because the poems call readers' attention instead to their characters and because Jarrell's particular powers emerge so often from mimesis of speech. Jarrell's style responds to the alienations it delineates by incorporating or troping speech and conversation, linking emotional events within one person's psyche to speech acts that might take place between persons. . .Jarrell's style pivots on his sense of loneliness and on the intersubjectivity he sought as a response.<ref name="Burt"/></blockquote>

Jarrell was first published in 1940 in ''5 Young Poets'', which also included work by John Berryman.<ref>"5 Young Poets," published in 1940 by New Directions, contained forty pages of poems by each of the following poets: Mary Barnard, George Marion O'Donnell, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, and W. R. Moses.</ref> His first separate collection of poetry, ''Blood for a Stranger'', which was heavily influenced by [[W.H. Auden]], was published in 1942&nbsp;– the same year he enlisted in the [[United States Army Air Corps]]. His second and third books, ''Little Friend, Little Friend'' (1945) and ''Losses'' (1948), drew heavily on his Army experiences. The short lyric "[[The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner]]" is Jarrell's most famous war poem and one that is frequently anthologized.

His reputation as a poet was not firmly established until 1960 when his [[National Book Award for Poetry|National Book Award]]-winning<ref name=nba1961>
[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1961 "National Book Awards – 1961"]. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved 2012-03-02.
<br/>(With acceptance speech by Jarrell and essay by Scott Challener from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)</ref>
collection ''The Woman at the Washington Zoo'' was published. Beginning with this book, Jarrell broke free of Auden's influence and the influence of the [[New Criticism|New Critics]] and developed a style that mixed Modernist and Romantic influences, incorporating the aesthetics of [[William Wordsworth]] in order to create more sympathetic character sketches and dramatic monologues.<ref name="Burt"/> The scholar [[Stephanie Burt]] notes, "Jarrell took from Wordsworth the idea that poems had to be 'convincing as speech' before they were anything else."<ref name="Burt"/> His final volume, ''The Lost World'', published in 1965, continued in the same style and cemented Jarrell's reputation as a poet; many critics consider it to be his best work. Stephanie Burt states that "in the 'Lost World' poems and throughout Jarrell's oeuvre. . .he took care to define and defend the self [and]. . .his lonely personae seek intersubjective confirmation and . . .his alienated characters resist the so-called social world."<ref name="Burt"/> Burt identifies the chief influences on Jarrell's poetry to be "[[Marcel Proust|Proust]], [[William Wordsworth|Wordsworth]], [[Rainer Maria Rilke|Rilke]], [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]], and the poets and thinkers of Jarrell's era [particularly his close friend, [[Hannah Arendt]]]."<ref name="Burt"/>

===Criticism===
From the start of his writing career, Jarrell earned a solid reputation as an influential poetry critic. Encouraged by [[Edmund Wilson]], who published Jarrell's criticism in ''[[The New Republic]]'', Jarrell developed his style of critique which was often witty and sometimes fiercely critical. However, as he got older, his criticism began to change, showing a more positive emphasis. His appreciations of [[Robert Lowell]], [[Elizabeth Bishop]], and [[William Carlos Williams]] helped to establish or resuscitate their reputations as significant American poets, and his poet friends often returned the favor, as when Lowell wrote a review of Jarrell's book of poems ''The Seven League Crutches'' in 1951. Lowell wrote that Jarrell was "the most talented poet under forty, and one whose wit, pathos, and grace remind us more of [[Alexander Pope|Pope]] or [[Matthew Arnold]] than of any of his contemporaries." In the same review, Lowell calls Jarrell's first book of poems, ''Blood for a Stranger'', "a tour-de-force in the manner of Auden."<ref>Lowell, Robert. "With Wild Dogmatism." ''New York Times Book Review'' 7 October 1951, p. 7.</ref> And in another book review for Jarrell's ''Selected Poems'', a few years later, fellow-poet [[Karl Shapiro]] compared Jarrell to "the great modern [[Rainer Maria Rilke]]" and stated that the book "should certainly influence our poetry for the better. It should become a point of reference, not only for younger poets, but for all readers of twentieth-century poetry."<ref>Shapiro, Karl. "In the Forest of the Little People." ''The New York Times Book Review'' 13 March 1955.</ref>

Jarrell is known for his essays on [[Robert Frost]]&nbsp;— whose poetry was a large influence on Jarrell's own&nbsp;— [[Walt Whitman]], [[Marianne Moore]], [[Wallace Stevens]], and others, which were mostly collected in ''Poetry and the Age'' (1953). Many scholars consider him the most astute poetry critic of his generation, and in 1979, the poet and scholar [[Peter Levi]] went so far as to advise younger writers, "Take more notice of Randall Jarrell than you do of any academic critic."<ref>The Paris Review, The Art of Poetry No. 14 Peter Levi, Interviewed by Jannika Hurwitt. Issue 76, Fall 1979.[http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3379/the-art-of-poetry-no-24-peter-levi]</ref>

In an introduction to a selection of Jarrell's essays, the poet [[Brad Leithauser]] wrote the following assessment of Jarrell as a critic:<blockquote>[Jarrell's] multiple and eclectic virtues&nbsp;—originality, erudition, wit, probity, and an irresistible passion&nbsp;—combined to make him the best American poet-critic since [[T.S. Eliot|Eliot]]. Or one could call him, after granting Eliot the English citizenship he so actively embraced, the best poet-critic we have ever had. Whichever side of the Atlantic one chooses to place Eliot, Jarrell was his superior in at least one significant respect. He captured a world that any contemporary poet will recognize as "the poetry scene"; his ''Poetry and the Age'' might even now be retitled ''Poetry and Our Age''.<ref>Leithauser, Brad. Introduction. No Other Book: Selected Essays. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.</ref></blockquote>

===Fiction, translations, and children's books===
In addition to poetry and criticism, Jarrell also published a satirical novel, ''[[Pictures from an Institution]]'', in 1954, drawing upon his teaching experiences at [[Sarah Lawrence College]], which served as the model for the fictional Benton College. He also wrote several children's books, among which ''The Bat-Poet'' (1964) and ''[[The Animal Family]]'' (1965) are considered prominent (and feature illustrations by [[Maurice Sendak]]). In 1957 Jarrell began his translation of [[Goethe]]‘s Faust Part One for [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]]. It was published in 1976. Jarrell translated poems by [[Rainer Maria Rilke]] and others, a play by [[Anton Chekhov]], and several [[Brothers Grimm|Grimm]] [[fairy tales]].