An intimidating perfectionist wedded to compassionate humanism, Randall Jarrell (pronounced juh rehl) combined the talents of author, translator, and strident critic. Like poet-critic T. S. Eliot, he earned the respect of his elders, including poets John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Marianne Moore. Essentially shy and soft-spoken before an audience, he gained a reputation for impassioned public readings, zippy sports cars, delight in fairy tales, and fierce public debates on the status of modern poetry, including that of Allen Ginsberg and the Beat generation.
Jarrell maintained his Tennessee mountaineer's decorum and naïveté by refusing alcohol, tobacco, gossip, and racy talk. He was born on May 6, 1914, in Nashville and spent his childhood in Hollywood, California. After the divorce of his parents, he returned to his hometown at age 12 to live with his grandparents. Although he majored in psychology in his undergraduate years at Vanderbilt University, he studied under Fugitive Agrarians John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren and demonstrated a remarkable intellectual range and gift for language and analysis. He completed an M.A. in English in 1938 and taught at Kenyon College until 1939, when he joined the faculty of the University of Texas and married his first wife, Mackie Langham.
