Product Description
Poet, novelist, critic, and teacher, Randall Jarrell was a diverse literary talent with a distinctive voice, by turns imaginative, realistic, sensitive, and ironic. His poetry, whether dealing with art, war, memories of childhood, or the loneliness of everyday life, is powerful and moving. A poet of colloquial language, ample generosity, and intimacy, Jarrell wrote beautifully "of the American landscape," as James Atlas noted in American Poetry Review, "[with] a broad humanism that enabled him to give voice to those had been given none of their own."

The Complete Poems is the definitive volume of Randall Jarrell's verse, including Selected Poems (1955), with notes by the author; The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1960), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; and The Lost World (1965), "his last and best book," according to Robert Lowell. This volume also brings together several of Jarrell's uncollected or posthumously published poems as well as his Rilke translations.
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Customer Reviews (3)

America's Great Poet of WWII
A great poem ought to be huge - grand in scope, but not necessarily excessive in length. Great poetry should tell massive stories with multiple layers concisely and artfully. One doesn't need obscure references, convoluted language, nor self-congratulatory internal winkings. Poetry is supposed to be honest. A great poem should pack a serious punch of power and style and insight.

It's a complicated world and life is complex, confusing, and manifestly difficult to fathom. Poetry is at its best when it illustrates and even explains something of life and humanity in a form that is reachable and readily understood, entertaining and impressive. Overly complex poetry tends to be more a demonstration of the art and poet rather than anything that might tend to educate, enlighten, or entertain the reader.

I've heaped praise and criticism on the Nashville Fugitives. I believe the finest Civil War poem of the 20th century is by one of them - "Lee in the Mountains", by Donald Davidson. Conversely, the worst Civil War poem of the last century was perpetrated by Allen Tate another Fugitive. His poem "Ode to the Confederate Dead" is something of a crime; a criminal cruelty dumped upon an entire country by an otherwise credible poet. Tate's poem has long been considered a classic, a suitable tribute to the Confederate dead - the truth is that both assertions are false.

Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead" is a brilliant poem conceived by another writer associated with the Fugitives (Lowell studied under John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College). These three poems represent the finest and the worst 20th century poetic treatments of the Civil War. So, it is somewhat ironic that one of the finest poets of WW2 should also be a student of Ransom, and a colleague of Robert Lowell at Kenyon - another Fugitive associate and Nashvillian. Let's now complete the Nashville connection...

Perhaps the greatest American poet of WW2 is Randall Jarrell. This poet who would write of bombing raids and dying ball-turret gunners, who would bring the reality of the war into his poetry so powerfully, so lyrically, and so successfully - was born in Nashville and would later teach at Vanderbilt, the very home of the Fugitives.

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) could embed the nitty gritty of war into his work - the machinery, the oil, the gunmetal, the equipment of death and destruction. He would populate his poems with people who de-populated cities- the air crews of the Eighth Air Force, for example. Jarrell brought the casualties, the blood, the losses, the mechanics of war together in such a way as to bring the war home to the reader - Jarrell's poems make World War Two real; every casualty is strongly felt.

As with most survivors of war, Jarrell was deeply affected if not scarred by his war experiences. Jarrell served in the Army Air Corps (precursor to the US Air Force) working in a control tower. He had enlisted to flybut failed to qualify. Jarrell went on to a very successful academic and writing career after the war becoming a noted critic and poet. He died in 1965 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in a traffic accident. It is not known if Jarrell's death was a suicide or an accident, but his bouts with depression and the intense emotional depth of his poetry give one pause. Robert Lowell referred to his old Kenyon colleague as one of the "best lyric poets of the past".

Jarrell's war poems are jarring, and very real. He brings the experience home and slams it down on the page so that the reader must deal with it, somehow. As with so many of Jarrell's WW2 poems reading "Little Friend, Little Friend" is an emotional experience, a jarring slap on the side of the head with the truth and ugly reality of war. The ugliness and horror of war can be shared via the beauty of poetry, with the obvious irony there for all to see.

One of Jarrell's greatest poems is but a fragment and challenges the definition of poetry itself. It is very short, and very powerful. It seems to embrace the men and machines of the war, and put them back in the air where Jarrell always knew them to be - doing their terrible damage and raining death down upon the cities and one another.

David Perkins wrote, "They are vivid and moving incidents of combat, told with an exceptionally sensitive psychological insight and moral perplexity." (A History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 393.) Jarrell tells his stories in beautiful language with little fanfare, and intense emotional power. His poems are novels on a page, huge stories of massive events and shattered people and cities all scrunched up on the page like a crashed bomber - and rebuilt in poetry by way of explanation.

"Little Friend, Little Friend" is a radio transmission/poem between a bomber pilot and a fighter pilot flying in hostile skies. They are there for each other to a certain extent, always just out of range. They do what they can for each other. And in these few lines is a very powerful, very simplified view of the camaraderie, ugliness, bravery, and extremes of fighting wars in the air. Jarrell is one of America's most brilliant poets.

"Little Friend, Little Friend"
by Randall Jarrell, 1945

. . . . Then I heard the bomber call me in:

"Little Friend, Little Friend, I got two
engines on fire. Can you see me, Little
Friend?"

I said "I'm crossing right over you.
Let's go home."

My favorite America poet of the 20th century
Randall Jarrell was the very image of the academic poet. He wore beautiful tweeds. His beard was just-so. He drove a sports car. He was ferociously well-educated. (His wife teasingly called him "arrogant and pretentious." His response: "Wittier than anybody!") His classes were legendary. And he had a tragic death: hit by a car as he walked along a highway at dusk.

And, of course, he was accomplished. In addition to his poems, Jarrell was an acute critic --- those essays are collected in No Other Book --- who could build a case for a writer he loved or destroy an enemy with a line: Oscar Williams's poems, he said, give the impression of "having been written on a typewriter by a typewriter." He wrote a novel satirizing a college literature department. He loved fairy tales, and produced a brilliant translation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The poems? You've read him. You just forgot. Jarrell served in World War II. This is his classic poem, anthologized everywhere --- "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," in its entirety:

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

I love Jarrell for his later work, especially the poems from the collection, "The Lost World." He has a leering sense of sex, a warmly ironic take on the dance between men and women, and although he certainly understood men, his sympathies seemed to lay with the despair and hopefulness of women. Which is all to say: Despite what he knew, he was a total romantic. "A wish, come true, is life. I have my life," he wrote. Knowing what we do about his second marriage, we know that this satisfaction is not invented.

Some favorite lines:

While you are, how am I alone?...
Be, as you have been, my happiness;
Let me sleep beside you, each night, like a spoon;
When, starting from my sleep, I groan to you,
May your "I love you" send me back to sleep.
At morning bring me, grayer for its mirroring,
The heavens' sun perfected in your eyes.

A clever reader will plow through this book, pencil in hand, the better to mark lines to steal. Jarrell is that good. And that contemporary --- you won't have to stretch to make his poetry your own. Go ahead. No one will know. And I will never tell.

An interesting poet
I picked up this collection in order to read Jarrell's fairy tale poems that are included, particularly in "Once Upon a Time."However, with such a large example of his work before me, I found myself reading more and finding bits and pieces which spoke to me.I recommendthis collection for learning more about Randall Jarrell and his body ofwork. ... Read more

Product Description
Randall Jarrell was only fifty-one at the time of his death, in 1965, yet he created a body of work that secured his position as one of the century's leading American men of letters.Although he saw himself chiefly as a poet, publishing a number of books of poetry, he also left behind a sparkling comic novel, four children's books, numerous translations, haunting letters, and four collections of essays.Edited by Brad Leithauser, No Other Bookdraws from these four essay collections, reminding us that Jarell the poet was also, in the words of Robert Lowell, "a critic of genius."Amazon.com Review
"Most critics," Randall Jarrell wrote in a 1952 essay, "are so domesticatedas to seem institutions--as they stand there between reader and writer, sodifferent from either, they remind one of the Wall standing between Pyramusand Thisbe." His complaint was as accurate then as it is now. Yet Jarrellhimself had nothing of the literary obstructionist to him. The essays hewrote over the course of three decades--in which he mingled his assessmentsof poetry and prose with the occasional cri de coeur over the stateof American civilization--always escort the reader directly into the innersanctum of the work at hand. And they do so with such scintillating,comical brilliance that most other criticism seems to pale into testyinsignificance. We should be grateful, then, that Brad Leithauser hasassembled No Other Book, which returns to print many of Jarrell'simperishable picks and pans.

Jarrell's slash-and-burn style caused a certain discomfort among his fellowpoets, particularly those who fell short of his sky-high standards. Andindeed, his inspired jabs have lost little of their pungency or amusement:Oscar Williams's poetry, for example, "gave the impression of having beenwritten on a typewriter by a typewriter." Even Walt Whitman, whosereputation Jarrell single-handedly repaired, gets the occasional spanking.

Only a man with the most extraordinary feel for language, or nonewhatsoever, could have cooked up Whitman's worst messes. For instance: whatother man in all the history of this planet would have said, "I am ahabitant of Vienna"? (One has an immediate vision of him as a sort ofFrench Canadian halfbreed to whom the Viennese are offering, withtrepidation, through the bars of a zoological garden, little mounds ofwhipped cream.)

Customer Reviews (8)

Excellent book, terrific price
Everything about this transaction was excellent: I obtained a fine book, in excellent condition, for a terrific price.

One of the Best Critics of the Century
I came across this book about a year ago.I picked up a used copy of it, and read "The Age of Criticism."Afterwards I could not put the book down.I was not familiar with Jarrell's essays, and they amazed me."The Age of Criticism" is one of the most prescient essays that I have ever read.These essays are in no way dated.They hold a position similar only to some of Dr. Johnson's best critical works.The only other comparison that I can make is to Paul Fussell.In other words, essays that are enornously insightful and will remain read (Unlike so many pieces of criticism).
After reading Mr. Leithauser's selection, I bought Jarrell's four books of criticism, and have read them all.Some of the reviewers have complained about Mr. Leithauser's choices.I think it is great.A wonderful introduction to Jarrell's great essays.Mr. Leithauser's short selections for "A Jarrell Gallery,"demonstrate quite easily the epigrammatic nature and customary brilliance of Jarrell (they include short selections from many of Jarrell's essays that he did not include in this Selected).In fact Mr. Leithauser's selection made me re-evaluate the editor.I still don't care for his poetry, but he's an intelligent man.
I highly recommend this collection to anyone interested in poetry (his essays on individual poets are exceptional.Though I often disagree with Jarrell's estimate of Graves, Williams, Moore, Cummings and others, they are nevertheless a delight to read--should not criticism be enjoyable??), the state of criticism (in other words, atrocious, which Jarrell had predicted--"The first generation [of critics] wrote distinguishably well; the second wrties indistiguishably ill; who knows how the third will write?"), and how criticism should be written (there is much we can learn here--he informs our own opinions (what he says of Pound, for example--much blue clay, but some wonderful diamonds within), he might change or force us to think about them, and he shows how to write).Jarrell can be a blistering critic, and that is delightful to read. What emerges, however, is not a cynical view or that of a curmudgeon, but an enormously positive approach simply to reading, and enjoying literature.He concludes one essay, brilliantly with, "Read at whim.Read at whim." He writes about what has so often been though, but never quite so well expressed.

Needed book
So much of Jarrell's prose is either out-of-print or just so hard to find, that we are lucky to have this book. For those who lament the inclusion of so many pieces on pop culture, they need to remember that some of those pieces made Jarrell both popular but also got him in trouble. To not include them would be to misrepresent Jarrell historically (and deprive us of some very funny writing). Unfortunately, there really were only 2 Jarrell essays on Auden (he never got around to writing the book he planned), and one of those is here. Everything in this book is useful, and this is a good representative collection ofJarrell's prose.

Yes, Another Book
Jarrell's lush communication style has always thrilled me. For the rare impact Jarrell's style has on me.

I am moved simply by the effort to bring Jarrell back to the fray.

It is enough for me to be touched once more by the rare combination of language-as-electrical current unique to Jarrell's voice.

I stick by my guns
The reader from Zion does have some legitimate points to make--that late essay on Stevens is sorely missed, and perhaps Brad Leithauser has indeed weighted the collection too heavily towards Jarrell's lamentations oncontemporary culture. Yet I still can't understand how anybody with an earfor English prose could complain about this delightful, witty,supernaturally wise collection. And the nitpicking about the book's"precious" production values is even nuttier--what did you want,a volume bound in corrugated cardboard? Until the Library of America wisesup and devotes a book to Jarrell--and really, between Poetry and the Age,Kipling Auden & Company, and The Third Book of Criticism, there'sPLENTY of material--this one will have to do. And it does, handsomely. Canwe stop the griping, please? ... Read more

Product Description

Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women’s college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall Jarrell’s classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging a new standard for campus satire—and instantly yielding comparisons to Dorothy Parker’s razor-sharp barbs. Like his fictional nemesis, Jarrell cuts through the earnest conversations at Benton College—mischievously, but with mischief nowhere more wicked than when crusading against the vitriolic heroine herself. 

“A most literate account of a group of most literate people by a writer of power. . . . A delight of true understanding.”—Wallace Stevens

“I’m greatly impressed by the real fun, the incisive satire, the closeness of observation, and in the end by a kind of sympathy and human warmth. It’s a remarkable book.”—Robert Penn Warren

“Move over Dorothy Parker. Pictures . . . is less a novel than a series of poisonous portraits, set pieces, and endlessly quotable put-downs. Read it less for plot than sharp satire, Jarrell’s forte.”—Mary Welp

“One of the wittiest books of modern times.”—New York Times

“[T]he father of the modern campus novel, and the wittiest of them all. Extraordinary to think that ‘political correctness’ was so deliciously dissected 50 years ago.”—Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

“A sustained exhibition of wit in the great tradition. . . . Immensely and very devastatingly shrewd.”—Edmund Fuller, Saturday Review

“[A] work of fiction, and a dizzying and brilliant work of social and literary criticism. Not only ‘a unique and serious joke-book,’ as Lowell called it, but also a meditation made up of epigrams.”—Michael Wood

When the book was first published in 1954, most considered Gertrude Johnsonto be a none-too-veiled portrait of Mary McCarthy. (The PartisanReview, for instance, failed to run a planned excerpt for fear oflitigation.) "As a writer Gertrude had one fault more radical than all therest: she did not know--or rather, did not believe--what it was like to bea human being. She was one, intermittently, but while she wasn't she didnot remember what it had felt like to be one; and her worse self distrustedher better too thoroughly to give it much share, ever, in what she said orwrote." Pictures from an Institution is a superb series of poisonousportraits, set pieces, and endlessly quotable put-downs. One reads it lessfor plot than sharp satire, of which Jarrell is the master. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Scholarship has its privileges
What a strange novel. I knew of it vaguely as about Mary McCarthy's stint at Sarah Lawrence in the postwar idyll when college jobs appeared easy to get and the literate spoke of German poetry in the original and listened to twelve-tone music, but Jarrell's only fiction's certainly exceedingly odd. It meanders, it ruminates, it penetrates, all in an elusive style permeating tone, voices, conversations from a curiously placed, not quite omniscient, narrator sounding a lot like the poet himself.

Moments of mockery, as in the performance of "The Life of Nature" ballet by students, or poignancy, as with Constance's immersion in the Grimm's tale of the Juniper Tree, alternate. Gertrude as the McCarthy stand-in for me seemed less engrossing. Descriptions such as "torn animals were removed at sunset from that smile" make her seem more evilly enjoyable than she really is as a figure to be caricatured. "She's the worst Southerner since Jefferson Davis" is a great line, all the same. I guess you, as was Jarrell, had to be there.

Other characters such as the boyish booster President of Benton College, and his dull wife, and other cowed faculty (few students make much of an impression, tellingly, and few scenes take place in class) float by with similar blends of observation and detachment. The attention given Dr. Rosenbaum appeared enormous given the relatively small role his part added up to in terms of advancing the storyline. The college appears as if remote from the rest of the world, even as it determinedly (this being 1954) imposes its progressive values on generations of women, bohemian or polite, mannered or gawkish. "Living around colleges the way you do, you've just lost your sense of what's probable," Gertrude chides the narrator.

Gertrude's predecessor goes off to another college. "Somehow, after sixty years in it, the world had still not happened to her, and she stood at its edge with a timid smile, her hand extended to its fresh terrors, its fresh joys--a girl attending, a ghost now, the dance to which forty years ago she did not get to go."

There's not much plot, which is the point our narrator makes about Gertrude's own attempts to make out of this bucolic college year a ripping satire. "Her books were a systematic, detailed, and conclusive condemnation of mankind for being stupid and bad; yet if mankind had been clever and good, what would have become of Gertrude?" Such remarks keep you turning the pages, even if it's a slow, skewed, and oddly paced narrative.

I valued this novel for its sudden, unpredictably placed, passages of insight. "Poor moths attracted to the lepidopterist, who trade them their soft wings for the hard conclusion that they are typical specimens of genus A, species B, sub-species C--and who murmur with their last breath that he is a typical lepidopterist!"

"Someone at a travelogue cannot help feeling, even if he knows better: 'Lucky coolies, to be there in the midst of the romance of the East!' But they aren't in it, they are it, so it is no good to them."

"The people of Benton, like the rest of us, were born, fell in love, married and died, lay sleepless all night, saw the first star of evening and wished upon it, won lotteries and wept for joy. But not at Benton."

Saying "I guess," the narrator notes, is a tic of Americans. They cannot match their jaded, harsher, crueler European counterparts. But, I guess that nobody other than a poet could have written this eccentric, eloquent, enigmatic, and enduring, novel. It's an acquired taste that may come and go as you read it, but it should linger, as the passages I cited do, at their own offbeat, barely registered, moments.

The Supreme Academic Novel
Author Randall Jarrell's brilliantly witty, prophetic novel from the middle of the last century shows in their bud many of the absurd developments which have come to full flower in current American academe. Endless Tolerance, Creativity, and Diversity are already the buzzwords par excellence at fictional Benton College of the 1950's. Accordingly , Jarrell presents us with an art department whose members are so open minded (i.e. reluctant to judge between good and bad) that "if someone dipped a porcupine in chocolate and called it modern, they'd swallow it." Similarly, a creative writing department replete with published authors brought in to teach students more ambitious than talented flourishes at Benton. One such student, Sylvia Moomaw, has written a story of which she's singularly proud. It involves a bug which wakes up in bed to find itself turned into a man. "Influenced by Kafka," she shyly acknowledges, when talking about her "artistry" to the skeptical central character, Sydney. Finally, Benton College is especially self-congratulatory over its efforts at outreach, seeking token representatives for Diversity's purposes, even from an area as remote and unpromising as Tierra del Fuego, lest anyone be excluded. If artists generally see in advance of the rest of us, this novel may be adduced as evidence for the point.

Fall out of your chair, roaring funny!
I laughed out loud through the entire thing! People on the street would stop me and ask what was so funny.Randall Jarrell, a poet, and Mary McCarthy were on the Bard College campus at the same time in the '50's, when McCarthy was a writer in residence for a year.Jarrell shadows her cold-hearted fiction-gathering techniques, as she observes the Bard faculty in action(this is during the 1950's) for a book she wrote called The Groves of Academe.My piano teacher thought it was a mean-spirited view of McCarthy, but Jarell was a cose friend of hers; it's somewhat of a loving portrait.PS: Groves of Academe was also very good.Pictures is a "Making Of".

Disappointing
I was determined to like this book and gave it my best shot, but found I couln't bring myself to finish it.Yes, it's witty, but it's also hopelessly dated.The fifties had come and gone long before I was born, so I confess that many of the cultural references went right over my head.If you are looking for a spoof on academia, you're better off reading David Lodge or Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim.

Locked in an Institution
The title tells you right away that this book will be very clever, but it should also alert you that it is a series of satiric set pieces rather than a fully-realised novel.The narrator, self-effacing and elusive, turns his gaze on administrators and faculty at fictional Benton College more or less in turn although a flimsy plot takes us through the term.Some of the characters, notably the music professor, attain full stature as literary creations but the main object of the narrator's attention, the woman novelist, is presented with a cruelty that is difficult to comprehend within the story as we have it.It is clear that we are reading a roman-a-clef and I for one did not have the key.However, the narrator has a wonderful store of witticisms and parts of the book are very funny even if the total effect is uneven. ... Read more

Product Description
There was once a little brown bat who couldn't sleep days-he kept waking up and looking at the world. Before long he began to see things differently from the other bats, who from dawn to sunset never opened their eyes. The Bat-Poet is the story of how he tried to make the other bats see the world his way.

Here in The Bat-Poet are the bat's own poems and the bat's own world: the owl who almost eats him; the mockingbird whose irritable genius almost overpowers him; the chipmunk who loves his poems, and the bats who can't make beads or tails of them; the cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, and sparrows who fly in and out of Randall Jarrell's funny, lovable, truthful fable.

Customer Reviews (12)

Fun story
This book has become quite collectible for the illustrations from Maurice Sendak.He made very detailed black and white drawings of the forest and the animals.The story is about a young bat who could not sleep in the daytime like he was suposed to, and he got to see how different the world was when the other bats were fast asleep. He then tries to explain to the other bats what it is like, and he even makes up some poems. It is not a poetry book, but a very funny adventure.

The Bat Poet
I was recently at the desert visitor's center in Borrego Springs, California and attended a talk at the center by a park ranger about bats.A lady present had a book she wanted to tell everyone about.It was the Bat Poet.I am an educator (retired) with a major in English and have a special interest in children's literature.I am especially interested in older published works for children, so of course, I was interested in the Bat Poet.I enjoyed reading the book and plan to share it with my grandchildren and great grandchildren at certain ages.

I felt like a kid again with a book I love
This is my favorite children's book read as an adult!I can't wait for my kids to be old enough to enjoy this book as much as I did.Of course Maurice Sendak's illustrations are wonderful and added to the overall experience...what a special book!

The Bat Poet
The book arrived in about 8 days.The cover was torn and not in great shape, and the book does show its age, but it's a 1964 edition.It's a neat little book written by Randall Jarrell and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.I really wanted the book for one of the poems in the book.I couldn't find the poem on the Internet since it's not titled in the book. It is a poem that the bat makes up about the owl. Jarrell's choice of words creates such a wonderful mind picture of the bat's reaction to the owl.I just love the poem.I read it in college and never forgot it.This book won't get sold or given away.

A WONDERFUL LITTLE BOOK.
Randall Jarrell has given us a beautiful little story here of a bat and Maurice Sendak has given us some wonderful illustrations in the form of black and white drawings.There is not much to not like about this work.The children love it, and the adult reading it to the children will find it just as interesting and hypnotic as the child, if not more so, but on a different level.The text is wonderfully simple and a pure joy to read.I recommened this one highly. ... Read more

Product Description
In this engagingly diverse anthology, critic and poet Randall Jarrell illuminates storytelling as a fundamental human impulse. Redefining the story form in this collection of world classics, he sets ballads, poems, parables, anecdotes, fairy tales, and legends alongside short stories by Anton Chekhov, Isak Dinesen, Robert Frost, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Anne Porter, Leo Tolstoy, and others. Jarrell’s inimitable taste and innovative choices — he includes both well-known works like Gogol’s “The Nose” and quirkier selections such as Chuang Tzu’s “Five Anecdotes” — deepen the reader’s appreciation of the storyteller’s art and its place in the world. “Jarrell is everywhere the man who has just read something he loves or hates.... And what unfailing taste he possessed.” — Leslie Fiedler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

One of the best short story anthologies available
For some years, this has been one of my favorite collections of miscellaneous short stories.The variety is impressive, and the editorship by Randall Jarrell is delightfully idiosyncratic and eclectic.I like the fact that he includes a few fairy tales and even the Biblical Book of Jonah, in addition to modern masters of the story form like Isak Dinesen and Frank O'Connor. Note that there are not many American or English short stories, however. Just for the record, the contents of the collection are:RANDALL JARRELL: Introduction;FRANZ KAFKA: A Country Doctor; ANTON CHEKHOV: Gusev;RAINER MARIA RILKE: The Wrecked Houses; The Big Thing; ROBERT FROST: The Witch of Co̦s; GIOVANNI VERGA: La Lupa; NIKOLAI GOGOL: The Nose; ELIZABETH BOWEN: Her Table Spread; LUDWIG TIECK: Fair Eckbert; BERTOLT BRECHT: Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar; LEO TOLSTOY: The Three Hermits; PETER TAYLOR: What You Hear from `Em?; HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN: The Fir Tree; KATHERINE ANNE PORTER: He; ANONYMOUS: The Red King and the Witch; ANTON CHEKHOV: Rothschild's Fiddle; BROTHERS GRIMM: Cat and Mouse in Partnership; E. M. FORSTER: The Story of the Siren; THE BOOK OF JONAH; FRANZ KAFKA: The Bucket-Rider; SAINT-SIMON: The Death of Monseigneur; ISAAC BABEL: Awakening; CHUANG T'ZU: Five Anecdotes; HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL: A Tale of the Cavalry;
WILLIAM BLAKE: The Mental Traveller; D. H. LAWRENCE: Samson and Delilah; LEO TOLSTOY: The Porcelain Doll; IVAN TURGENEV: Byezhin Prairie; WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: The Ruined Cottage; FRANK O'CONNOR: Peasants; ISAK DINESEN: Sorrow-Acre.

where dreams begin
this is a superb anthology of stories, poems, fables and more collected by poet/novelist randall jarrell to illuminate the notion of "storytelling as a fundamental human impulse, one that announces itself at the moment, hidden in infancy, that dreams begin..." authors include kafka, chekhov, rilke, robert frost, gogol, elizabeth bowen, brecht, peter taylor, hans christian anderson, the book of jonah, anonymous, the brothers grimm, isaac babel, chuang t'zu, blake, tolstoy, turgenev, dinesen, among others. reading this reaffirms why i love to read, and puts in to relief that narrative timelessness so often missing in contemporary fiction. strange and dreamy, each story swallows you whole. i've read this twice and will return again. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description

This is the story of how, one by one, a man found himself a family. Almost nowhere in fiction is there a stranger, dearer, or funnier family -- and the life that the members of The Animal Familylive together, there in the wilderness beside the sea, is as extraordinary and as enchanting as the family itself.

The mermaid and the hunter become a family when the hunter takes abear cub from its mother to live with them as a son. "The bear'stable manners were bad. But so were the mermaid's--especially as shecouldn't resist throwing the bear pieces of fish." Having a beararound seems perfectly normal, but not quite a complete family, soeventually the hunter captures a spotted baby lynx. When the lynxbrings home not another dead partridge, but a little boy, thedelicate, playful family dynamics change again. This book of low-keyepiphanies is packed with delightful, illuminating, often unexpectedcomparisons of the ocean world and the land world most non-mermaidswouldn't have considered. Enhanced by a beautiful design and gorgeousillustrations by Maurice Sendak, this book is perfect for anyreader--young or old--ready for a bit of gentle philosophy with adecided twinkle. (All ages) --Karin Snelson ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

the animal family review
I first read this book when I was in the third grade, and could not find it in the public library, but was so excited to have found it here; it's just as I remembered it. Love this book!

Reads like a poem
My daughter's third grade teacher read this book aloud, and my daughter asked permission to bring it home to read to me - the first time she has ever done that.The kid has taste.This quickly became one of my all-time favorite children's books, although I hesitate to put it into such a narrow category.It's a beautiful, simply told story that gets me every time.My son just turned 13, and every birthday we tell stories about what life was like when the kids were born.I find myself going back to this story - "we had you always."

sweet magic
This book has been a favorite in my family for generations. It is short (you can read it in an afternoon easily ) and the writing is simple and straigtforward but also sweet and magical.The author's introductory note captures my heart:"say what you like, but such things do happen.Not often, but they do happen".

A timeless message .. of the times
Randall Jarrell (1914-65) is better known as a poet, although probably best known today for his poetry criticism. He also wrote a few children's book, most notably The Bat-Poet and The Animal Family, the later published the same year he died and winning the 1966 Newbery Honor. It is wonderfully illustrated by Maurice Sendak - of Where the Wild Things Are fame - in beautiful pen and ink drawings.

The story is a sort of fable along the lines of Hans Christian Andersen or Lewis Carroll, but updated with a 1960s message. It is about a lonely hunter who lives in a cabin by the sea who with time comes to gather around him a "family" of very different creatures, first a mermaid, and then a bear, lynx, and human boy. Each is an orphan whose parents have either died or somehow left the scene. They all are very different animals yet find comfort and eventually identity with one another. It is a story in the spirit of the Age of Aquarius, when songs such as Free to Be You and Me and Free to Be a Family resonated during a cultural revolution in which boundaries of class, race and, in this case, even species were being explored, when everyone was a "brother" and "sister".

My reading of the story in its 1960s context is only one interpretation, this is not a heavy handed preachy book by any measure, it is timeless in its message about toleration of differences, the power of love to overcome anything (including for a mermaid to live on land, in effect brining a happy ending to Hans Andersen's otherwise brutal The Little Mermaid), and in particular for those who seek out love and find it in the most un-expected places. It is a short book, easy to read, and poetically written. Over the past 40 years it has found a place close to the heart of many children and adults, I only wish I had discovered it sooner.

Perfection
This is a beautiful, timeless story, told in gorgeous prose, and charmingly decorated. I'm not the sort of person who gushes over books, but this one is true literary perfection, and not just for children. It's the kind of book that, no matter how old you are when you first read it, will stay with you for the rest of your life. ... Read more

Product Description
Randall Jarrell was the critic whose taste defined American poetry after World War II. Poetry and the Age, his first collection of criticism, was published in 1953. It has been in and out of print over the past 40 years and has become a classic of American letters. In this new edition, two long-lost lectures by Jarrell have been added. Recently discovered by critics, they speak to issues at the heart of Jarrell's criticism: the structure of poetry and the question "Is American poetry American?" ... Read more

Product Description

Once upon a time there was a mothe . . . who loved her daughter so much, she wanted to make her a wonderful surprise. So she mixed up some dough and cut out a beautiful gingerbread rabbit. But she got the surprise when the rabbit jumped up, ran out the door, and escaped into the forest!

This gentle story of a mother's fervent love for heronly daughter, and the comical, suspenseful adventures of her rabbitcookie is carefully spun in Jarrell's flawless, slightlytongue-in-cheek prose. A jauntier inanimate rabbit-comes-to-life storythan Margery Williams's The VelveteenRabbit, and a more complex tale than The GingerbreadMan, The Gingerbread Rabbit is a classic read-aloudthat youngsters will clamor for again and again. (Ages 5 and older)--Karin Snelson ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Fun, unexpected story
My daughter and I enjoyed reading this story.She is very interested in rabbits, and the gingerbread rabbit's canny attitude one moment and naivete the next made for amusement on our parts.The fox's section was definitely the highlight of the story.As a mom, I appreciated that the story brought a resolution for the mom, although of COURSE she would not be able to catch the gingerbread rabbit!

A Great Laugh-Out-Loud Adventure
I was actually surprised by how good this little story is. I initially bought it while shopping for bunny-themed books as a secular Easter gift for my children, and when I came across this, illustrated by Garth Williams - one of my favorites - I thought, why not?

This is essentially the story of a loving mother who crafts the perfect gingerbread rabbit as a present for her daughter, a rabbit so perfect that he comes to life. As he lays there fearfully pondering his existence, and ultimately his fate - being that he's made of gingerbread and is meant to be a confectionery treat - he becomes engaged in conversation with the various kitchen utensils who've witnessed many a human feeding before. What ensues is a ridiculously funny conversation guaranteed to entertain any young child, and better yet - any adult who is reading this to a young child.

The rabbit, of course, succeeds in escaping his harrowing situation, and the mother follows in a wild chase through the forest, where they both meet with a squirrel, a fox, and eventually the story comes full-circle when the gingerbread rabbit meets up with the very rabbit that inspired his creation. The story ends well for all involved... with the possible exception of the wily old fox.


The illustrations, for me, have that nostalgic Garth Willliams feel to them. They authentically capture the suspense, humor, and sweetness of the story. The story itself was a wonderfully pleasant surprise. I will certainly seek out more of Randall Jarrell's books for my children, especially those illustrated by Maurice Sendak. I am surprised that Jarrell is not a better known children's author, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who comes across the listing for it. Of all the thousands (I'm not kidding - we're library hounds) of children's books I've read in the past few of years, this one would easily earn a spot in my top twenty-odd favorites.

Gingerbread
The book arrived in a very timely manner.
It is a bit too wordy for younger children.

CLEVER and WONDERFUL story for a read aloud!CLASSIC!
I can't believe that no one has reviewed this book!What a cute story that is thoroughly engaging for little ones and fun to read out loud as well.The witty storytelling is suburb with just the right amount of suspense and great twists.The narrator even addresses the audience, which definitely adds to the appeal and lends an oral storytelling feel to the experience.It is also noteworthy that there is a happily-ever-after ending for everyone -- no violence in store for the gingerbread bunny! :) The black and white illustrations are adorable as well.My girls 4 and 6 really loved the book and I'm sure we'll be reading it again soon.Extend the fun by baking gingerbread rabbits and recreating the surprise that the mother made for her daughter!It is too bad that a classic like this is apparently overlooked!I will definitely be adding more of Randall Jarrell's books to our collection!

... Read more

Product Description

Jarrell's witty, pointed, and long-lost lectures trace the evolution of Auden's style from the late 1920s to the early 1950s and examine the ideas and contexts that animated his poetry, including psychoanalysis, leftist politics, and Christian theology. Delivered at Princeton University in 1952, these six lectures offer new insights into Auden's poetry, particularly his long poems, and Jarrell's own work as critic and poet.

Product Description

This book examines all of Jarrell's work, incorporating new research such as previously undiscovered essays and poems. Burt considers both his aesthetic choices and their social contexts, exploring the ways in which Jarrell's efforts and achievements encompassed the concerns of his time, from teen culture to the Cuban Missile Crisis. He also situates the poet-critic among his peers, including Bishop and Arendt.

Product Description
An excellent study of the literary career of this American poet is written with grace and intelligence. "Pritchard is just, and more than just, to Jarrell's virtues and to his sufferings--as a man, as a critic, as a poet..."--Helen Vendler, The New Republic . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A pertintent review of an important poet-critic; essential!
William Pritchard's biography gives Jarrell's work, his poetry and criticism, an illumination rarely seen in any recent biography. Pritchard dives right in to the essentials of the often over looked man of letters. Amust for any fan of Jarrell and American poetry as well. In this text it isthe poet's work that comes first, givin the readers a rare glimpse intoprobably the most well read individual since Eliot. Through Jarrell's workare we then capable of understanding the obsessions and motivations of atruly interesting man.

A pertintent review of an important poet-critic; essential!
William Pritchard's biography gives Jarrell's work, his poetry and criticism, an illumination rarely seen in any recent biography. Pritchard dives right in to the essentials of the often over looked man of letters. Amust for any fan of Jarrell and American poetry as well. In this text it isthe poet's work that comes first, givin the readers a rare glimpse intoprobably the most well read individual since Eliot. Through Jarrell's workare we then capable of understanding the obsessions and motivations of atruly interesting man. ... Read more

Product Description
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.Amazon.com Review
In the years since his death in 1965, Randall Jarrell has inspired a wealthof tributes. Robert Lowell and John Berryman commemorated their friend andfellow poet in verse, while a lovely 1967 festschrift includedcontributions by the likes of Hannah Arendt, Alfred Kazin, Marianne Moore,Maurice Sendak, and Elizabeth Bishop (who recalled that Jarrell "alwaysseemed more alive than other people, as if constantly tuned up to theconcert pitch that most people, including poets, can maintain only forshort and fortunate stretches.")

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

To be married to Randall was to be encapsulated with him. He wanted, and wehad, 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 himplay tennis; he picked out my clothes. Sometimes we were brother and sister"like Wordsworth and Dorothy" and other times we were twins, Randallpretended.

Customer Reviews (1)

Monogamy the way it's supposed to be
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 ofthem frankly impossible to distinguish from low-grade misery--and is noless instrinsically monotonous than music played in a major key. Proof?This lovely, touching memoir by Mary Jarrell. Widow of the greatpoet-critic Randall Jarrell, the author never sends down her pathographicbucket in search of darkness, drugs, dementia, or erotic folly. Instead weget the details of a gloriously happy existence: the foods they ate, themusic they listened to, they cities they loved, even the sportyhaberdashery that Jarrell was addicted to. There's a sweetness here thatnever cloys, never curdles. And Ms. Jarrell turns out to be an elegant andattentive reader of her husband's poetry, forcing even a curmudgeon like meto 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. ... Read more

Product Description
In this expanded edition of Randall Jarrell's letters, his widow, Mary, has added letters from Jarrell to Peter Taylor, publication of which was withheld during Taylor's lifetime. Taylor was, along with Robert Lowell, Jarrell's oldest and closest friend, and the inclusion of these incomparable letters adds another dimension of friendship, artistry, and intellect to a collection already noted for its behind-the-scenes glimpse of twentieth-century American literary history in the making. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Interesting but not at the highest level of Criticism
This collection has reviews and criticism on a wide variety of poets and writers. Jarrell was one of the most celebrated critics of his day, and a poet of considerable reputation. The reviews are mostly occasional pieces, and touch upon the work of many writers both known and no longer known. Jarrell is a champion of Frost who he considers the best of the modern poets but he also writes insightfully about Wallace Stevens whose linguistic brilliance is unsurpassed. He surveys the life- work of Cummings and sees him as pandering to the idea of what the public wants the Poet to be. Jarrell has a quite long essay on the early development of Yeats which is background to his trying to show that it is the late Yeats who is the truly great poet. Jarrell celebrates the young Berryman and is generous wherever he sees sparks of real writing talent. The essays are filled with interesting observations but to my mind do not reach the highest level of criticism. There is no theoretical structure and no reading of the works, or the greatest part of them in depth.

phenomenal
jarrell shows everything that is wrong with criticism today. the intelligence, wit, good writing, and fearlessness that is found in his criticism is missed in the critics of today. jarrell writes on everything, poetry, prose, art, music, and even cars. and he does it well.

i've only seen one other critic with this skill, and i believe he has a collection of his essays/reviews coming out soon: R.S. Gwynn ... Read more