08/06/2026
Randall Jarrell is considered by many to be one of the most gifted and prodigious poetic voices to have contributed to the American literary canon. His body of work included not just poetry but translations, literary criticism and children’s literature. Jarrell had a long working relationship with Maurice Sendak who illustrated three of Jarrell’s four children’s books, including The Animal Family, which was nominated for the Newbery in 1966. Some have compared Jarrell to T.S. Eliot in his influence and intellect, someone who wrote with a voice that seemed to command the attention and garner the respect of laypersons and fellow writers alike in whatever medium he chose to tackle. If Robert Frost (a poet Jarrell greatly admired) might be considered the poetic conscience of his generation, Jarrell wasn’t too far from that mark as well. Jarrell’s death in a 1965 traffic accident at the age of 51 further cements his legacy as one of America’s greatest writers.
Among those who mourned Jarrell in the wake of his tragic death was his good friend, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt who wrote the following about Jarrell:
When I last saw him, not long before his death, the laughter was almost gone, and he was almost ready to admit defeat. It was the same defeat he had foreseen more than ten years earlier in the poem entitled “A Conversation with the Devil.”
Indulgent, or candid, or uncommon reader
–I’ve some: a wife, a nun, a ghost or two–
If I write for anyone, I wrote for you;
So whisper, when I die, We was too few;
Write over me (if you can write; I hardly knew)
That I–that I–but anything will do,
I’m satisfied. . . . And yet–
and yet, you were too few:
Should I perhaps have written for your brothers,
Those artful, common, indulgent others?
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We are honored to give a home to a great many of Randall Jarrell’s works – most are first editions – which come from our acquisition of the modern fiction collection of renowned editor, Michael di Capua.
