  Poetry
This week: Randall Jarrell Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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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.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
By Randall Jarrell
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 its 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.
On May 6, 1914, in Nashville Tennessee, Owen Jarrell and wife Anna Campbell Jarrell welcomed son Randall into their family. Owen moved his family to California to open a photography studio. His business didn’t fare well and eventually led to the couples divorce. Anna moved back to Nashville with Randall and his younger brother Charles. Back in Nashville Jarrell went to school and fell in love with the write word. He spent a lot of time at the Carnegie Library reading. Jarrell was an excellent student. To help his mother out Jarrell got a job as a newspaper boy and sold Christmas paper door to door.
Jarrell earned his Bachelor’s degree in 1935 and Master’s in 1938, from Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt University he studied with Robert Penn Warren and John Crowe Ransom, and was mentored by Allen Tate. After getting his Master’s Jarrell went to Kenyon College in Ohio, working there as an instructor. Jarrell went on to teach at the University of Texas, followed by a positions at Sarah Lawrence College, then the University of North Carolina and the University of Cincinnati. Jarrell had a visiting
professorships at Princeton, and the University of Illinois.
In 1942 Jarrell enlisted in the United States Air Force. He started training to become a flying cadet but failed to qualify. He then became a celestial training navigator in Tucson, Arizona. It was during this time he began writing about the war and the military life he was exposed to. He wrote “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” and published his first book of poetry, “Blood for a Stranger,” in 1942. Followed by his next two books,”Little Friend, Little Friend, published in 1945 and “Losses” in 1948. Jarrell wrote many reviews for literary magazines and a book of essays, “Poetry and the Age,” published in 1953. He held the position of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1956 to 1958. He was also a member of the editorial board of American Scholar for eight years, beginning in 1957.
In 1963 Jarrell's mental health started to take a turn for the worse. He was fighting with turning fifty and growing old. Then when John F. Kennedy was shot Jarrell just sat in front of the TV for days in a depressed state. After seeking professional help he was put on an antidepressant that left him with manic highs and lows. Jarrell published two children's books, “The Bat Poet,” in 1964 and “The Animal Family,” in 1965. He attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. While in the hospital he was taken off the antidepressant and his mental health looked to be improving.
Jarrell’s finally book of poetry “The Lost World,” was published in 1965. In the fall of 1965 Jarrell returned to teaching. One evening after therapy for his injured wrist Jarrell took a long walk on a busy highway next to the hospital. He was struck by a passing car and died instantly. Many of his friends believe it was suicide but the coroner ruled it as an accident. Randall Jarrell died October 14, 1965, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
The House In The Woods
by Randall Jarrell
At the back of the houses there is the wood.
While there is a leaf of summer left, the wood
Makes sounds I can put somewhere in my song,
Has paths I can walk, when I wake, to good
Or evil: to the cage, to the oven, to the House
In the Wood. It is a part of life, or of the story
We make of life. But after the last leaf,
The last light--for each year is leafless,
Each day lightless, at the last--the wood begins
Its serious existence: it has no path,
No house, no story; it resists comparison...
One clear, repeated, lapping gurgle, like a spoon
Or a glass breathing, is the brook,
The wood's fouled midnight water. If I walk into the wood
As far as I can walk, I come to my own door,
The door of the House in the Wood. It opens silently:
On the bed is something covered, something humped
Asleep there, awake there--but what? I do not know.
I look, I lie there, and yet I do not know.
How far out my great echoing clumsy limbs
Stretch, surrounded only by space! For time has struck,
All the clocks are stuck now, for how many lives,
On the same second. Numbed, wooden, motionless,
We are far under the surface of the night.
Nothing comes down so deep but sound: a car, freight cars,
A high soft droning, drawn out like a wire
Forever and ever--is this the sound that Bunyan heard
So that he thought his bowels would burst within him?--
Drift on, on, into nothing. Then someone screams
A scream like an old knife sharpened into nothing.
It is only a nightmare. No one wakes up, nothing happens,
Except there is gooseflesh over my whole body--
And that too, after a little while, is gone.
I lie here like a cut-off limb, the stump the limb has left...
Here at the bottom of the world, what was before the world
And will be after, holds me to its back
Breasts and rocks me: the oven is cold, the cage is empty,
In the House in the Wood, the witch and her child sleep.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
Her Masterpiece
Melancholy fills the morning air
Too many emotions disavowed
As playful breezes flow through branches
The gaze of the artist ponders mute clouds
Deep sentiments she longs to share
But the canvas is blank except for unseen art
No brush has ever cooperated
Or revealed the colors of her heart
With boulders for her mountainside easel
Resonant feelings begin to gush
Head tipped to the side, she strums the strings
As a painter would slide his brush
Manuscript paper flaps in the breeze
As her painting touches new frontiers
Notes and melodies tell the story in her heart
And the masterpiece draws ever near
Yet never here
One artist’s paint dries
Another’s song is sung
Whether or not we hear a reprise
Undoubtedly another work is begun
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: July 18, 2018 Issue [#9013]
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