Sentimental Education: Randall Jarrell Among the Women

Abstract

Randall Jarrell (1914-65), American poet, critic, and teacher, was a refractory heir of high modernism. His genealogy is clearly traceable to T. S. Eliot via John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, but if he was an apt pupil he was also a wayward disciple, both in his criticism and in his poetry. Though his reviews of fellow poets inspired fear and respect--so fierce and devastating were his witty dismissals, so incisive his praise--his poetry has often been dismissed as sentimental. Bristling with ambition and competitiveness, he nonetheless preferred to more prestigious appointments his position at a small southern woman's college. He suffered fools badly and impatiently but was legendary for his kindness as a teacher of the unsophisticated. His longtime colleague Peter Taylor described his irrepressible laughter as cruel and/or gleeful, a combination that typified his personality and was sometimes bewildering to his intimates.