Remembering Randall: A Memoir of Poet, Critic, and Teacher Randall Jarrell [Paperback]

Mary von Schrad Jarrell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 2000

When Randall Jarrell died in 1965, he left behind a critically acclaimed body of poetry, fiction and literary criticism that has earned him a permanent place in American literature. In these seven essays, his widow writes lovingly and knowingly about the wellsprings and character of his poetry, particularly his work on his last and best book, "The Lost World"; the creation of his celebrated children's books, "The Bat-Poet" and "The Animal Family;" his lifelong friendship with short-story writer Peter Taylor; his dedicated commitment during the last eight years of his life to completing his translation of Goethe's "Faust, Part One;" and their remarkable and joyous marriage.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the years since his death in 1965, Randall Jarrell has inspired a wealth of tributes. Robert Lowell and John Berryman commemorated their friend and fellow poet in verse, while a lovely 1967 festschrift included contributions by the likes of Hannah Arendt, Alfred Kazin, Marianne Moore, Maurice Sendak, and Elizabeth Bishop (who recalled that Jarrell "always seemed more alive than other people, as if constantly tuned up to the concert pitch that most people, including poets, can maintain only for short and fortunate stretches.")

Still, none of these homages have quite the intensity or immediacy of Mary Jarrell's Remembering Randall. The author was married, after all, to her subject. And as she relates, their relationship involved a very high level of playful symbiosis:

To be married to Randall was to be encapsulated with him. He wanted, and we had, a round-the-clock inseparability. We took three meals a day together, every day. I went to his classes and he went on my errands. I watched him play tennis; he picked out my clothes. Sometimes we were brother and sister "like Wordsworth and Dorothy" and other times we were twins, Randall pretended.

This isn't, on the other hand, a tell-all. Like her late husband, Mary Jarrell has an old-fashioned and very attractive sense of propriety. So there's no lurid accounting of bedroom behavior, and the author handles her subject's nervous collapse with supreme, sympathetic tact. What we do get is a close-focus portrait of a poet, his personality, and his career. There are many fine insights about the work: "To open Randall's Complete Poems at any page is to find in some degree a Faustian world of disappointment or self-disappointment; and it is to look in vain for that moment so fair that he'd say to it, 'Stay!'" (Her prose, by the way, it itself a kind of tribute to the poet, echoing his mannerisms right down to the Jarrellian ellipsis.) And while Remembering Randall stays pretty firmly focused on the subject at hand, it includes glimpses of fellow authors that no reader will want to miss, like this one-sentence snapshot of Jack Kerouac: "He took no food while he was with us but kept a six-pack of beer always within reach, even carrying one in each hand the day we walked to the zoo." No fan of Jarrell's "The Woman at the Washington Zoo" can read this detail without realizing that one writer's inspiration is indeed another writer's hangover. --James Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Mary von Schrader met Randall Jarrell at a writers' conference in 1951; they married a year later and remained inseparable for most of the 13 years until Randall's death in 1965. These nine essays record, admiringly and lovingly, aspects of Randall's work and of his life with Mary. One piece shows how Randall turned others' ideas and events into his own poems, beginning with his first love poem to Mary, a wonderful six-line exhortation called "The Meteorite." Another essay tracks the poet's deep friendship with the fiction writer Peter Taylor. Mary's analysis of Randall's "Lyric Ear" relates the aural effects in his poems to his actual speech. And a concluding essay tries hard to convey the ups and downs, the joys and difficulties, of Randall and Mary's odd and sometimes inspiring marriage: she follows and shares his successive enthusiasms, commiserates when his poet friends (like Robert Lowell) enter manic phases and tries hard to cope with the instability that marked the last year of Randall's life. Neither a critical study, nor a biography, nor a comprehensive memoir of the years it covers, this informal and amiable gathering of essays testifies first of all to Mary's deep love for her late husband, and to her persistent, cherishing attention to his work. Some of the best material (notably an essay on Washington, D.C., in the 1950s) is new, while a few of these essays appeared in literary journals in the 1970s. Readers seeking scandal will find none. Those who want to hear about happy marriages could do worse than discover Mary Jarrell's account. And no one who already cares for Randall's poetry or prose will want to miss Mary's recollections of its author. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061180130
• ISBN-13: 978-0061180132
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,966,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Monogamy the way it's supposed to be, May 25, 2000

By 

Jim Kibble - See all my reviews

This review is from: Remembering Randall: A Memoir of Poet, Critic, and Teacher Randall Jarrell (Hardcover)

Let's paraphrase Tolstoy and say, Every happy memoir is alike, but every unhappy memoir is unhappy in its own way. And then let's point out that Count Leo was wrong. Happiness has a million gradations of its own--some of them frankly impossible to distinguish from low-grade misery--and is no less instrinsically monotonous than music played in a major key. Proof? This lovely, touching memoir by Mary Jarrell. Widow of the great poet-critic Randall Jarrell, the author never sends down her pathographic bucket in search of darkness, drugs, dementia, or erotic folly. Instead we get the details of a gloriously happy existence: the foods they ate, the music they listened to, they cities they loved, even the sporty haberdashery that Jarrell was addicted to. There's a sweetness here that never cloys, never curdles. And Ms. Jarrell turns out to be an elegant and attentive reader of her husband's poetry, forcing even a curmudgeon like me to take a second look at several poems. Still, this is a book about life, not art--and a memorable testimonal on behalf of boon companionship.