There is a less hysterical ‘‘realism’’ in the
careful observation of these details than in the
more violent war poems. Unfortunately, how-
ever, such observation gives way towards the
poem’s end to Mr. Jarrell’s reliance upon the
worn-out poetic diction of lines like:
The shadows lengthen, and a dreaming hope
Breathes, from the vague mound,Life;
From the grove under the spire
Stars shine, and a wandering light
Is kindled for the mourner, man.
The angel kneeling with the wreath
Sees, in the moonlight, graves.
Perhaps the most successful poem inLosses
is ‘‘A Camp in the Prussian Forest.’’ It is a quiet,
slow-paced description of a death camp. The
action or the scene behind the poem, the inciden-
tal news which is contained in the poem, is mov-
ing as a good newspaper report of horror is
moving. But few words in the poem are posi-
tioned to create that flash of vision which in
its quality incorporates the ‘‘news’’ of the poem,
but which is so much more than just that. When
this does happen, as in stanza six, the effect is
liberating:
I paint the star I sawed from yellow pine
And plant the sign
In soil that does not yet refuse
Its usual Jews
Here it is the word ‘‘usual’’ which, in its prox-
imity to ‘‘Jews’’ (the musical half-chime should be
mentioned) adds a philosophical dimension to
what, up to that point, has been a statement
made at a level of personal compassion.
Lossesrepresents a retreat from the small
eminence achieved by Mr. Jarrell’s second collec-
tion,Little Friend, Little Friend. If his ‘‘modern-
ity’’ has led him into an over-strategic attempt to
resuscitate certain discarded poetic modes and
intentions in the ordering of contemporary expe-
rience, I can only point out that the job has been
much better done by poets of World War I like
Owen, Read, Grenfell and Rosenberg. IfLosses
were a book by an unknown young poet, one
would not consider it worth reviewing. Keeping
in mind the reputation of Randall Jarrell, I find it
a disappointing and baffling experience.
Source:W. S. Graham, ‘‘Review ofLosses,’’ inPoetry,
Vol. 72, No. 6, September 1948, pp. 302–307.
Hayden Carruth
In the following review, Carruth counters W. S. Gra-
ham’s critique of Losses, arguing that Jarrell’s
subjects are ‘‘hardly incidental’’ and that his war
poems are ‘‘quite as good as any written in this
century.’’
Here is another reviewer who tells us what is
the stuff of poetry. It was tried before, I think, by
Bruin of Colchester and, somewhat later, by
Mgr. Polidore Flaquet.
Now it is time to question this kind of talk
by Mr. Graham. It is time to challenge what Mr.
Stephen Spender, a better-tempered Englishman
who is also living at present in our monstrous
country, recently deplored as ‘‘the denigration of
American poetry as external by English writers.’’
For the subjects of poetry cannot be limited.
The lesson taught to us by Mr. Ezra Pound, Dr.
William Carlos Williams, and Mr. T. S. Eliot can-
not be soon forgotten. Poetry will be what it must
be, and it is not the critic’s job to administer it or
patronize it, but rather to investigate its methods
and explore its meanings.
It is apparent from Mr. Graham’s review of
Lossesthat poetry is, in his opinion, only that
thing which puffs itself up, like a certain tropical
fish, whenever you touch it. It must be a living
thing, swimming back and forth between the
lines of print, ready to explode in your face at
the slightest anxiety. It is not the words, it is not
what they say; it is a small organism which slips
skittishly among the periods and commas, eye-
ing the barnacle-encrusted words with dark dis-
trust. What a pity Mr. Graham has never caught
one of these creatures to show to the rest of us!
The fact of the matter is that what Mr. Gra-
ham calls ‘‘incidental values’’ can be turned into
very good poetry indeed. Furthermore, whether
we would or no, these values are hardly inciden-
tal. The world is full of motor cars, of machine
guns, of money. These things have a considerable
influence, sometimes good and sometimes bad,
on our modern life. They can be treated as instru-
ments by all of us, as statistics by sociologists, as
subjects by artists. Many poets use them as sym-
bols; many more (and I believe Mr. Randall Jar-
rell is, on the whole, one of these) choose to
employ them in their own right as things to be
noticed and questioned. They cannot be elimi-
nated from poetry, nor can they be made inciden-
tal to it.
Two capacities are required for the composi-
tion of poetry: a talent for writing in our English
language, and a sure intelligence. If any person
possesses these qualities to a sufficient degree, heLosses