 Poetry: April 21, 2021 Issue [#10728] |
This week: Randall Jarrell Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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The Olive Garden
by Randall Jarrell
(Rainer Maria Rilke)
He went up under the gray leaves
All gray and lost in the olive lands
And laid his forehead, gray with dust,
Deep in the dustiness of his hot hands.
After everything this. And this was the end.
-- Now I must go, as I am going blind.
And why is it Thy will that I must say
Thou art, when I myself no more can find Thee.
I find Thee no more. Not in me, no.
Not in others. Not in this stone,
I find Thee no more. I am alone.
I am alone with all men's sorrow --
All that, through Thee, I thought to lighten,
Thou who art not, O nameless shame ...
Men said, later: an angel came.
Why an angel? Alas, there came the night,
And leafed through the trees, indifferently.
The disciples moved a little in their dreams.
Why an angel? Alas, there came the night.
The night that came was no uncommon night:
So hundreds of nights go by.
There dogs sleep; there stones lie,
Alas a sorrowful, alas any night
That waits till once more it is morning.
For then beseech: the angels do not come,
Never do nights grow great around them.
Who lose themselves, all things let go;
They are renounced by their own fathers
And shut from their own mothers' hearts.
On May 16,1914 in Nashville Tennessee Owen Jarrell and his wife Anna welcomed their son Randall Jerrell into the world. Jerrell often spent time visiting his grandparents in Los Angeles as a child. These trips would be the inspiration for his poem, “The Lost World.” He attended Hume Fogg High School, where he played tennis and was part of their drama department, starring in a few plays. This is also where he started his career as a critic, writing an essay for the school magazine. Jerrell went on to study at Vanderbilt University.
While at Vanderbilt University he wrote and edited for one of the school's magazines. Jarrell earned his BA there. At Vanderbilt he studied with John Crowe Ransom. He also completed his master's degree in English at Vanderbilt in 1937. He would follow Ransom to Kenyon College where he roomed with the young Robert Lowell. After his time teaching at Kenyon he went on to teach at the University of Texas. His first volume of poetry was published in 1940 in "5 Young Poets." He taught there for a couple of years before he joined the United States Army Air Forces. His poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" was written about this time in his life. His second and third volumes were Little Friend, Little Friend published in 1945 and Losses published in 1948.
Jerrell married his first wife Mackie Langham, before entering his time in the service. The marriage was rocky when Jerrell returned from active duty and the couple divorced. In 1952 Jerrell married his second wife Mary von Schrader. The couple moved around in the early years of their marriage, while Jerrell taught at different colleges and served as the consultant of poetry in the Library of Congress. The couple moved to Greensboro where Jerrell taught at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. In 1960 he wrote and published his collection "The Woman at the Washington Zoo."
Towards the end of his life Jerrell suffered from depression and became manic at times. On October 14, 1965 Randall Jerrell was walking on the side of the highway, at dusk, when he was struck by vehicle and killed. He was 51.
The Breath Of Night
by Randall Jarrell
The moon rises. The red cubs rolling
In the ferns by the rotten oak
Stare over a marsh and a meadow
To the farm's white wisp of smoke.
A spark burns, high in heaven.
Deer thread the blossoming rows
Of the old orchard, rabbits
Hop by the well-curb. The cock crows
From the tree by the widow's walk;
Two stars in the trees to the west,
Are snared, and an owl's soft cry
Runs like a breath through the forest.
Here too, though death is hushed, though joy
Obscures, like night, their wars,
The beings of this world are swept
By the Strife that moves the stars.
The Orient Express
by Randall Jarrell
One looks from the train
Almost as one looked as a child. In the sunlight
What I see still seems to me plain,
I am safe; but at evening
As the lands darken, a questioning
Precariousness comes over everything.
Once after a day of rain
I lay longing to be cold; after a while
I was cold again, and hunched shivering
Under the quilt's many colors, gray
With the dull ending of the winter day,
Outside me there were a few shapes
Of chairs and tables, things from a primer;
Outside the window
There were the chairs and tables of the world ...
I saw that the world
That had seemed to me the plain
Gray mask of all that was strange
Behind it -- of all that was -- was all.
But it is beyond belief.
One thinks, "Behind everything
An unforced joy, an unwilling
Sadness (a willing sadness, a forced joy)
Moves changelessly"; one looks from the train
And there is something, the same thing
Behind everything: all these little villages,
A passing woman, a field of grain,
The man who says good-bye to his wife --
A path through a wood all full of lives, and the train
Passing, after all unchangeable
And not now ever to stop, like a heart --
It is like any other work of art,
It is and never can be changed.
Behind everything there is always
The unknown unwanted life.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
We are sparrows
dreaming that we are eagles
soaring
above pine forests.
Below
tall trees beckon,
begging us
to build our nests
among their strong branches.
Scattered
across the forest floor
moss covered boulders
are warmed
by spring's sunrise.
Honorable mention:
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