Jarrell, Randall - W. S. Graham (review date 1948)

W. S. Graham (review date 1948)

SOURCE: Graham, W. S. Review of Losses, by Randall Jarrell. Poetry 72, no. 6 (September 1948): 302-07.

[In the following review of Losses, Graham finds the poems of Jarrell's third collection banal, incidental, vague, and disappointing.]

Mr. Randall Jarrell's name as a poet and critic is one which in England as in this country carries considerable prestige. One is at a loss therefore to account for the shocking betrayal of poetic responsibilities and, by implication, critical ones exemplified by his third collection of poems.1 One's perplexity grows when one finds the critics comparing it variously to the work of Browning, Auden and Tennyson, and included with the “great artificers” who “bring us into a world so painfully clarified that it seems there is nothing more to say.” Rarely have I witnessed such a dividing gulf between reputation and achievement. The situation...

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