I must say I didn't care for the poetry of Randall Jarrell. Some of the poems were rife with the atrocities of war (such as Losses and The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner), and the others were convoluted and, while I was able to get the general meaning of them, I could not help feeling like I was missing something hidden between the lines. The poems just seemed too simple and obvious; even after I read them three or four times each I couldn't understand what I was missing.
I did like the imagery in A Girl In a Library. I could easily picture a young college girl, lulled to sleep by her studies, dreaming of sylphs and fairy tales and grander things than her life has to offer. She has left the world of home economics and physical education for the world of myth and grand history. She imagines herself in a place far more exciting than school has offered her. Perhaps the girl intuits the futility of the task set before her. Perhaps she is aware that home ec. and phys. ed. are but bits in the doldrums of life.
In Losses Jarrell seems to be talking about the realization that death is real and palpable came to him after he joined the army and went into combat. Before that death had seemed like something that only happened to other people. People distant from his personal sphere. He writes that it was something that happened to "aunts or pets or foreigners." These are all entities outside his insular life. After he joins the war though, he is hit with the significance of death and dying. It becomes something personal and real. And in The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner Jarrell seems to be saying that death loses its edge in a state of war. When the gunner dies they simply wash his body away without a thought and without much fanfare. He was just another casualty of war.
No comments:
Post a Comment