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Kipling, Auden and Co: Essays
Essay subjects range from poetry criticism through recordings of plays all the way to Ernie Pyle as a war reporter, the joy of owning a sports car, and the kauthor's favorite writers from Kipling to Kafka.
381 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1980
About the author
Randall Jarrell
112 books96 followersPoems, 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 29, 2008
Beyond a certain age, it's not quite seemly to have heroes, just as it's no longer cool to ride a skateboard or keep a water bong in the living room. One morning you go to open your private shrine and discover that all the statues have been pulled down from their pedestals, to be replaced by tiny action figures in obscene poses. And maybe it's better that way: what could be sadder than a grown man who worships Jim Morrison or Jack Kerouac or – well, my own hall of shame is just too embarrassing to excavate; add your own examples.
So, no, I don’t idolize Randall Jarrell but, after reading Kipling, Auden and Co., I feel an almost filial admiration for him. I don't know whether it's his wisdom, his air of benevolence or just his Civil-War monument beard, but there's something of the surrogate father about Jarrell. He'd make a fine Virgil to anyone's Dante.
And that's strange, in a way, seeing how brutally adversarial, not to say destructive, his criticism could be. By the time he'd reached his mid-twenties, Jarrell had become the great, snorting bull in the china shop of American letters, smashing established reputations to bits and cheerfully goring any ‘promising young talent’ unwise enough to wave a chapbook. To give you some idea, here's how unceremoniously he treats Ezra Pound, whose number he had as far back as 1940, when the old bullshit artist was still the sage of Rapallo:
Mr.Pound's universe became more and more a solipsistic one; the form, logic and amenities of his criticism some time ago assumed the proportions of a public calamity. And his special poetic gifts - and performance - succumbed in their turn. Writing good poetry is only occasionally difficult; usually it is impossible. But writing what seems to you good poetry is always easy, if only, somehow, your standards of what constitutes a good poem can be lowered (and specialized) to what you write; this unconscious and progressive lowering of taste, a sort of fatty degeneration of the critical faculties, is the most common of ends. Mr. Pound seems no longer able to discriminate between good and bad in his poetry: to him it is all good because it is all his.
A cruel diagnosis, perhaps, but if you've ever tried to wade through the ideograms and lecture notes of the Cantos, you'll have to acknowledge there's some truth to it.
While the spectacle of the young Jarrell tearing into some hoary windbag or squeaking poetaster is as exhilarating as literary bloodsports get, you rarely if ever feel that he was attacking out of malice or parti pris. He was a defensive critic, fighting on behalf of a principle and, somewhere beyond that principle, a literary culture. No matter how brilliantly phrased, his negative criticism boils down to a disappointed this simply isn't good enough.
On the evidence of Kipling, Auden and Co., Jarrell mellowed somewhat after the war. The claws came out less often as his energies were diverted into reclamation projects (Frost, Kipling et al.) and appreciations. Not all of it is great criticism; some of it is hardly more than good journalism (remembering that Dr. Johnson himself was primarily a ‘mere’ journalist). But in fairness to Jarrell, I should point out that the present volume is a posthumous collection of unpublished articles and reviews, meaning that this gaping, auriferous lode is, yes, just odds and ends, stuff he dashed off for money and forgot about. Unbelievable.
So, no, I don’t idolize Randall Jarrell but, after reading Kipling, Auden and Co., I feel an almost filial admiration for him. I don't know whether it's his wisdom, his air of benevolence or just his Civil-War monument beard, but there's something of the surrogate father about Jarrell. He'd make a fine Virgil to anyone's Dante.
And that's strange, in a way, seeing how brutally adversarial, not to say destructive, his criticism could be. By the time he'd reached his mid-twenties, Jarrell had become the great, snorting bull in the china shop of American letters, smashing established reputations to bits and cheerfully goring any ‘promising young talent’ unwise enough to wave a chapbook. To give you some idea, here's how unceremoniously he treats Ezra Pound, whose number he had as far back as 1940, when the old bullshit artist was still the sage of Rapallo:
Mr.Pound's universe became more and more a solipsistic one; the form, logic and amenities of his criticism some time ago assumed the proportions of a public calamity. And his special poetic gifts - and performance - succumbed in their turn. Writing good poetry is only occasionally difficult; usually it is impossible. But writing what seems to you good poetry is always easy, if only, somehow, your standards of what constitutes a good poem can be lowered (and specialized) to what you write; this unconscious and progressive lowering of taste, a sort of fatty degeneration of the critical faculties, is the most common of ends. Mr. Pound seems no longer able to discriminate between good and bad in his poetry: to him it is all good because it is all his.
A cruel diagnosis, perhaps, but if you've ever tried to wade through the ideograms and lecture notes of the Cantos, you'll have to acknowledge there's some truth to it.
While the spectacle of the young Jarrell tearing into some hoary windbag or squeaking poetaster is as exhilarating as literary bloodsports get, you rarely if ever feel that he was attacking out of malice or parti pris. He was a defensive critic, fighting on behalf of a principle and, somewhere beyond that principle, a literary culture. No matter how brilliantly phrased, his negative criticism boils down to a disappointed this simply isn't good enough.
On the evidence of Kipling, Auden and Co., Jarrell mellowed somewhat after the war. The claws came out less often as his energies were diverted into reclamation projects (Frost, Kipling et al.) and appreciations. Not all of it is great criticism; some of it is hardly more than good journalism (remembering that Dr. Johnson himself was primarily a ‘mere’ journalist). But in fairness to Jarrell, I should point out that the present volume is a posthumous collection of unpublished articles and reviews, meaning that this gaping, auriferous lode is, yes, just odds and ends, stuff he dashed off for money and forgot about. Unbelievable.
May 8, 2008
I'm reading the hardback, actually (the dead man who owned it before me sure liked his cigarettes). And it's too bad there isn't a photo-icon on this page. My dust jacket has a swell shot of Jarrell and his beard. Man, I wish I could grow whiskers like that. My wife would hate it but I think it would give my face that Educated Lumberjack look it's been after forever.
Later. . .
I admit, I didn't read every essay in here but I read most of them and now I'll put it back on the shelf for awhile, let us rest. I will say that parts of it moved me and all of it wowed me. I think we'd all be better off if this man would have lived longer, wrote more.
Later. . .
I admit, I didn't read every essay in here but I read most of them and now I'll put it back on the shelf for awhile, let us rest. I will say that parts of it moved me and all of it wowed me. I think we'd all be better off if this man would have lived longer, wrote more.
May 16, 2017
I pick up Jarrell every now and then, to remind myself that "poetry review" doesn't have to be a facile synonym for "blurb." But I never get off that easily, and I end up reading & reading, review after review. Oh, I think, if I could turn a phrase like that, I too would have to give up reviewing bad books because it was bad for my character. But I probably wouldn't. I'd be too vain.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews