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Randall Jarrell

I lived from 1914-1965. I was from the United States, and am in the Americas category.

Poet, critic and teacher, Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee, to Anna (Campbell) and Owen Jarrell on May 6, 1914. Mr. Jarrell attended the Vanderbilt University and later taught at the University of Texas.

Mr. Jarrell also taught a year at Princeton and also at the University of Illinois; he did a two-year appointment as Poetry Consultant at the Library of Congress.

Randall Jarrell published many novels throughout his lifetime and one of his most well known works was in 1960, "The Woman at the Washington Zoo".

Upon Mr. Jarrells passing, Peter Taylor (A well known fiction writer and friend of Mr. Jarrell) said, "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."

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  • With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright.
    The child's head, bent to the book-colored shelves,
    37 lines, 1 comment
  • I walk beside the prisoners to the road.
    Load on puffed load,
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  • From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
    And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
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  • A bird that I don't know,
    Hunched on his light-pole like a scarecrow,
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  • If, in an odd angle of the hutment,
    A puppy laps the water from a can
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  • It was not dying: everybody died.
    It was not dying: we had died before
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  • At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
    I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
    34 lines, 3 comments
  • Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up
    In sea-coal satin. The flame-blue glances,
    41 lines
  • In the shabby train no seat is vacant.
    The child in the ripped mask
    24 lines, 1 comment
  • The moon rises. The red cubs rolling
    In the ferns by the rotten oak
    16 lines

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