Jarrell << juh REHL or JAR uhl >>, Randall (1914-1965), was an American poet and critic. His experiences in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II (1939-1945) are reflected in two books of poems, Little Friend, Little Friend (1945) and Losses (1948). “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” uses understatement to expose the impersonal horror of modern-day warfare.
In Jarrell’s later poems, he dramatized the losing battle he saw all people fighting against time and an indifferent universe. Jarrell believed that we can only hope to cultivate an intense, compassionate awareness of our position and cherish the moments of happiness from our past. Even so, there is no escape from a world in which “it is terrible to be alive.” Jarrell’s most eloquent variations on this theme appear in poems about his childhood in his last volume, The Lost World (1965). The Complete Poems appeared in 1968, after his death.
Jarrell was a superb interpreter of poets he admired, as in Poetry and the Age (1953). Other essays and reviews were collected in The Third Book of Criticism (1969) and Kipling, Auden & Co. (1980). Jarrell also wrote a satirical novel called Pictures from an Institution (1954) and children’s books.
Jarrell was born on May 6, 1914, in Nashville. He died on Oct. 14, 1965.
