Poet, critic and teacher, Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee, to Anna (Campbell) and Owen Jarrell on May 6, 1914. He attended Vanderbilt University as a day student with a small National Youth Administration allowance. While there he edited the Masquerader, won a letter as captain of the tennis team, made Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude. At Vanderbilt, Jarrell studied under Robert Penn Warren, who first published his criticism; Allen Tate, who first published his poetry; and John Crowe Ransom, who gave him his first teaching job—Freshman Composition and Tennis Coach at Kenyon, during the year that he finished his master's degree from Vanderbilt. Before leaving Kenyon, Jarrell became friends with the future fiction writer Peter Taylor and the future poet Robert Lowell who became his closest confidants and allies for the rest of his life.

Moving on to the University of Texas, Jarrell met and married Mackie Langham, a colleague. During World War II, he enlisted and served as a technical sergeant teaching celestial navigation until the war ended. Then he spent a year in New York as acting literary editor of The Nation and teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Returning to the south, Jarrell came to Woman's College (later renamed UNC-Greensboro) and remained there, except for leaves of absence, for the rest of his life.

Jarrell's leaves included the Harvard Seminar in American Civilization held in Salzburg; a teaching year at Princeton and also at the University of Illinois; a two-year appointment as Poetry Consultant (later designated Poet Laureate) at the Library of Congress; and numerous speaking engagements at colleges and universities, as well as his Phi Beta Kappa appointment as Visiting Scholar.

In the sixties, bearded Jarrell, in his Harris and herringbone tweeds, his bold plaid shirts, argyle socks and his cable-knit sweaters, cut a dashing figure in the classroom and driving through the campus in his white Mercedes convertible 190SL, and later his "metallic" sand Jaguar coupe XK120, with his second wife, Mary von Schrader, at his side.

His devotion to his cats, cars and tennis were campus gossip and he had many enthusiasms, like ballet, professional football, sports car races, dream analysis, science fiction, Germany, libraries, zoos, French Impressionists' paintings, opera, childhood and more, all of which are found in his poetry and prose.

In accepting the O. Max Gardner Award from the University of North Carolina, Jarrell coined his phrase, "If I were a rich man, I'd pay money to teach." Among his other honors were Guggenheim and National Arts and Letters grants, Chancellor of the American Poetry Society, election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters Committee for the Bollingen Award, the American University Women Award for Juvenile Literature and the National Book Award for Poetry.

Jarrell left behind nine books of poetry, four books of literary criticism, four children's books, five anthologies, a best selling academic novel, a translation of Goethe's Faust, Part I and a translation of Chekhov's The Three Sisters, produced on Broadway by The Actors' Studio.

Peter Taylor said of Jarrell, "To Randall's friends there was always the feeling that he was their teacher. To Randall's students there was always the feeling that he was their friend. And with good reason for both." Lowell said of Jarrell, "Now that he is gone, I see clearly that the spark of heaven really struck and irradiated the lines and being of my dear old friend—his noble, difficult and beautiful soul."

The Woman at the Washington Zoo
from The Woman at the Washington Zoo
Atheneum, 1960

The saris go by me at the embassies. Cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet. They look back at the leopard like the leopard. And I. . . .             this print of mine, that has kept its color Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so To my bed, so to my grave, with no Complaints, no comment: neither from my chief, The Deputy Chief Assistant, nor his chief- Only I complain . . . . this serviceable Body that no sunlight dyes, no hand suffuses But, dome-shadowed, withering among columns, Wavy beneath fountains-small, far-off, shining In the eyes of animals, these beings trapped As I am trapped but not, themselves, the trap, Aging, but without knowledge of their age, Kept safe here, knowing not of death, for death - Oh, bars of my own body, open, open! The world goes by my cage and never sees me. And there come not to me, as come to these, The wild beasts, sparrows pecking the llamas' grain, Pigeons settling on the bears' bread, buzzards Tearing the meat the flies have clouded. . . .                                           Vulture, When you come for the white rat that the foxes left, Take off the red helmet of your head, the black Wings that have shadowed me, and step to me as man: The wild brother at whose feet the white wolves fawn, To whose hand of power the great lioness Stalks, purring. . . .                       You know what I was, You see what I am: change me, change me!

The Achievement of Randall Jarrell: A Comprehensive Selection of His Poems. Edited by Frederick J. Hoffman. Glenview, III.: Scott. Foresman, 1970.

The Animal Family. New York: Pantheon Books, 1965.

The Bat-Poet. New York: Macmillan, 1964.

Blood for a Stranger. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1942.

The Complete Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969.

Fly by Night. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969.

The Gingerbread Rabbit. New York: Macmillan, 1964.

Jerome: The Biography of a Poem. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1971.

Kipling, Auden & Co.: Essays and Reviews, 1935-1964. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980.

Little Friend, Little Friend. New York: Dial Press, 1945.

Losses. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948.

The Lost World. New York: Macmillan, 1965.

Pictures from an Institution. New York: Knopf, 1954.

Poetry and the Age. New York: Knopf, 1953.

Randall Jarrell's Letters: An Autobiographical and Literary Selection. Edited by Mary Jarrell. Boston. Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays and Fables. New York: Atheneum, 1962.

Selected Poems. New York: Knopf, 1955.

Seven-League Crutches. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951.

The Third Book of Criticism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969.

The Woman at the Washington Zoo. New York: Atheneum, 1960.

Frequent appearances in periodicals including:

American Review, Mantic, Encounter, and Harper's

Additional information on Mr. Jarrell can be found in:

Adams, Charles M. Randall Jarrell, a Bibliography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958.

Beck, Charlotte H. The Dramatic Mode in the Poetry of Randall ]arrell. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tennessee, 1972.

Bryant, J. A., Jr. Understanding Randall Jarrell. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1986.

Critical Essays on Randall ]arrell. Edited by Suzanne Ferguson. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983.

Damashek, Richard. The Lost World of Randall Jarrell. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1972.

Ferguson, Suzanne. The Poetry of Randall Jarrell. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971.

Flynn, Richard. Randall Jarrell and the Lost World of Childhood. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.

Griswold, Jerome. The Children's Books of Randall Jarrell. Athens; University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Jacobson, Kent A. Randall Jarrell: In Search of Authority. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1975.

Prichard, William H. Randall Jarrell: A Literary Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.

Quinn, Bernetta. Randall Jarrell. Boston: Twayne, 1981.

Randall Jarrell, 1914-1965. Edited by Robert Lowell, Peter Taylor, and Robert Penn Warren. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967.

Shapiro. Karl. Randall Jarrell. Washington: Library of Congress, 1967.

(Numerous additional dissertations)

Links to further information:

The Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize

Randall Jarrell Collection at UNC-G