#randall jarrell

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of january

christian wiman hard night: "the ice storm"

timothy donnelly hymn to life

randall jarrell the complete poems: "the lost world"

dana levin the living teaching

stuart dybeck brass knuckles: "the knife-sharpener's daughter"

kofi awoonor the promise of hope: new and selected poems: "lament of the silent sisters"

bruce snider ode to a dolly parton drag queen

jon pineda birthmark: "translation"

brenda shaughnessy interior with sudden joy: "dear gonglya"

franny choi hangul abecedarian

atsuro riley hutch

clark moore strikes and gutters

jenny xie eye level: "rootless"

alberto ríos the smallest muscle in the human body: "rabbits and fire"

tim seibles mosaic

anthony hecht an offering for patricia

harry matthews cool gales shall fan the glades

robert glück the word in us: lesbian and gay poetry of the next wave: "burroughs"

albert goldbarth the poem of the little house at the corner of misapprehension and marvel

george seferis collected poems (george seferis): "spring a.d."

alberto ríos a small story about the sky

sharmila voorakkara for the tattooed man

robin blaser the holy forest: collected poems of robin blaser: "the truth is laughter 10"

robert pinsky gulf music: "antique"

henri cole blackbird and wolf: "twilight"

paul violi likewise: "in praise of idleness"

ron padgett collected poems: "what are you on?"

meena alexander birthplace with buried stones: "lychees"

sara borjas decolonial self-portrait

valerie martínez absence, luminescent: "the reliquaries"

kathryn simmonds the visitations: "in the woods"

kofi

[typewriter-worries]

For so many years I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me and its mouth watered.

Next Day, Randall Jarrell

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, / And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

[mrdirtybear]

'Randall Jarrell' as portrayed by Betty Watson. Jarrell (1914 - 1965) was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. From the start of his writing career, Jarrell earned a solid reputation as an influential poetry critic. between 1942 and 1995 over twenty books, in several different genres, appeared with his name as the author. Here is a 1919 article reappraising him as an writer and as a man. Betty Watson (born 1928) is an American born painter who is still celebrated in the 21st century.

[theshatterednotes]

American poet Randall Jarrell

[shanghaijim]

Fionn O’Shea and Oaklee Pendergast my little ball turret gunners I’m bracing myself for something horrible a la Randall Jarrell, they’re too sweet to live

[whisperthatruns]

90 North

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe, I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides I sailed all night---till at last, with my black beard, My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole. There in the childish night my companions lay frozen, The stiff furs knocked at my starveling throat, And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling, Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest. ---Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence Of the unbroken ice. I stand here, The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare At the North Pole... And now what? Why, go back. Turn as I please, my step is to the south. The world---my world spins on this final point Of cold and wretchedness: all lines, all winds End in this whirlpool I at last discover. And it is meaningless. In the child's bed After the night's voyage, in that warm world Where people work and suffer for the end That crowns the pain---in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land I reached my North and it had meaning. Here at the actual pole of my existence, Where all that I have done is meaningless, Where I die or live by accident alone--- Where, living or dying, I am still alone; Here where North, the night, the berg of death Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness, I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness---that the darkness flung me--- Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing, The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

Randall Jarrell, The Complete Poems (1981)

[godzilla-reads]

One of my favorite books:

🧜‍♀️ The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell

“Once upon a time, long, long ago, where the forest runs down to the ocean, a hunter lived all alone in a house made of logs he had chopped for himself and shingles he had split for himself.”

[dk-thrive]

Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands / And gulp from them the dailiness of life.

What a girl called "the dailiness of life" (Adding an errand to your errand. Saying, "Since you're up ..." Making you a means to a means to a means to) is well water Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world. The pump you pump the water from is rusty And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands And gulp from them the dailiness of life. —  Randall Jarrell, ‘Well Water’ in 'The Complete Poems' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; April 1, 1981) (via Alive on All Channels)

[thebeautifulbook]

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS Retold by Randall Jarrrell (New York: Farrar, Straus and, Giroux, 1972). Illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert

[cutiewithawakenedheart]

"The wood's wild eyes

Peer in from the green glades roped with light

From the paths that ribbon the sighing wild."

----Randall Jarrell

[elwenyere]

The Player Piano

I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House Run by a lady my age. She was gay. When I told her that I came from Pasadena She laughed and said, “I lived in Pasadena When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus.” 

I felt that I had met someone from home. No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle. Who’s that? Oh, something that we had in common Like—like—the false armistice. Piano rolls. She told me her house was the first Pancake House 

East of the Mississippi, and I showed her A picture of my grandson. Going home— Home to the hotel—I began to hum, “Smile a while, I bid you sad adieu, When the clouds roll back I’ll come to you.” 

Let’s brush our hair before we go to bed, I say to the old friend who lives in my mirror. I remember how I’d brush my mother’s hair Before she bobbed it. How long has it been Since I hit my funnybone? had a scab on my knee? 

Here are Mother and Father in a photograph, Father’s holding me.... They both look so young. I’m so much older than they are. Look at them, Two babies with their baby. I don’t blame you, You weren’t old enough to know any better; 

If I could I’d go back, sit down by you both, And sign our true armistice: you weren’t to blame. I shut my eyes and there’s our living room. The piano’s playing something by Chopin, And Mother and Father and their little girl 

Listen. Look, the keys go down by themselves! I go over, hold my hands out, play I play— If only, somehow, I had learned to live! The three of us sit watching, as my waltz Plays itself out a half-inch from my fingers.

-- Randall Jarrell

[typewriter-worries]

The Woman at the Washington Zoo, Randall Jarrell

[ Text ID: You know what I was, / You see what I am: change me, change me! ]

[davidhudson]

Randall Jarrell, May 6, 1914 – October 14, 1965.

1958 photo by Philippe Halsman.

[elegantlylamentingtheloss]

“A poet is a man [or woman] who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.”

–Randall Jarrell

[poem-today]

A poem by Randall Jarrell

The Player Piano

I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House Run by a lady my age. She was gay. When I told her that I came from Pasadena She laughed and said, “I lived in Pasadena When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus.” 

I felt that I had met someone from home. No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle. Who’s that? Oh, something that we had in common Like—like—the false armistice. Piano rolls. She told me her house was the first Pancake House 

East of the Mississippi, and I showed her A picture of my grandson. Going home— Home to the hotel—I began to hum, “Smile a while, I bid you sad adieu, When the clouds roll back I’ll come to you.” 

Let’s brush our hair before we go to bed, I say to the old friend who lives in my mirror. I remember how I’d brush my mother’s hair Before she bobbed it. How long has it been Since I hit my funnybone? had a scab on my knee? 

Here are Mother and Father in a photograph, Father’s holding me.... They both look so young. I’m so much older than they are. Look at them, Two babies with their baby. I don’t blame you, You weren’t old enough to know any better; 

If I could I’d go back, sit down by you both, And sign our true armistice: you weren’t to blame. I shut my eyes and there’s our living room. The piano’s playing something by Chopin, And Mother and Father and their little girl 

Listen. Look, the keys go down by themselves! I go over, hold my hands out, play I play— If only, somehow, I had learned to live! The three of us sit watching, as my waltz Plays itself out a half-inch from my fingers.

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)

The Player Piano” is thought by many to be Jarrell's last poem, written shortly before he was killed by a motorist.