Randall Jarrell and His Age (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Randall Jarrell's best-known poems are poems about the Second World War, poems about bookish children and childhood, and poems, such as "Next Day," in the..." (more)
Key Phrases: war poems, Berg Collection, Age of Criticism, President Robbins (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ordinarily, a book-length study of an American poet-critic almost 40 years dead isn't news, unless the poet-critic is T.S. Eliot. Yet this monograph from Burt is an exception. Burt (Popular Music) is one of the leading poet-critics of his own emerging generation, turning out an astonishing amount of terrific review-based criticism in places like the TLS and New York Times from his perch as an assistant professor of English at Mac lester College in St. Paul, Minn. His project here is nothing less than the full-scale rehabilitation of Jarrell (1914-1965), who is best remembered for Poetry and the Age (1953), a series of essays that changed the way his contemporaries read Robert Frost (and told them how to read Robert Lowell, among other poets); his best-known poem is the searing "90 North," comparing self-exploration to polar exploration with magnificent results. Burt, playing off Jarrell's title, casts him as the product of an age preoccupied with Freud and Freudianism. Jarrell's particular psychological lens was developmental; he wrote numerous children's books, and his work expressed his "preoccupations with youth, age, and aging." After a preliminary biographical chapter, Burt traces Jarrell's elaboration of his major themes, tracking him through "Jarrell's Interpersonal Style," "Institutions, Professions, Criticism," "Men, Women, Children, Families" "Time and Memory" and other rubrics, bringing to bear a great deal of primary source social science that, as Burt shows, shaped Jarrell. Anyone with an interest in how the "Age of Anxiety" (an Auden poem Jarrell hated) expressed itself through one of its most sensitive souls will find this book a window into a lost intellectual world.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Burt (English, Macalester Coll.), author of an award-winning book of poetry as well as numerous essays on the subject, presents close readings of Jarrell's poetry and prose works, including his novel Pictures from an Institution and two of his children's books. After a brief biographical chapter, the critic examines the theme of self in Jarrell's poems, focusing on six approaches to this topic: the self as it depends on other selves, the self against society and institutions, psychoanalytic models of the self, the self in time, childhood and adolescence, and mothers, fathers, and families. This book began as a dissertation, and most nonscholars will find that the literary jargon can make for rough going; however, the frequent excerpts from Jarrell's poetry and prose, as well as the overviews of American culture and society during the three decades in which he flourished (from the 1940s to the mid-1960s) make this a required source for anyone doing research on the life and work of this noteworthy American poet and critic. For upper-level undergraduate and graduate collections.
Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology Lib., CUNY, Brooklyn
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (January 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231125941
• ISBN-13: 978-0231125949
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,534,689 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)