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Randall Jarrell (1914--1965) was the most influential poetry critic of his generation. He was also a lyric poet, comic novelist, translator, children's book author, and close friend of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, and many other important writers of his time. Jarrell won the 1960 ...

Randall Jarrell (1914--1965) was the most influential poetry critic of his generation. He was also a lyric poet, comic novelist, translator, children's book author, and close friend of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, and many other important writers of his time. Jarrell won the 1960 National Book Award for poetry and served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. Amid the resurgence of interest in Randall Jarrell, Stephen Burt offers this brilliant analysis of the poet and essayist. Burt's book examines all of Jarrell's work, incorporating new research based on previously undiscovered essays and poems. Other books have examined Jarrell's poetry in biographical or formal terms, but none have considered both his aesthetic choices and their social contexts. Beginning with an overview of Jarrell's life and loves, Burt argues that Jarrell's poetry responded to the political questions of the 1930s, the anxieties and social constraints of wartime America, and the apparent prosperity, domestic ideals, and professional ideology that characterized the 1950s. Jarrell's work is peopled by helpless soldiers, anxious suburban children, trapped housewives, and lonely consumers. Randall Jarrell and His Age situates the poet-critic among his peers -- including Bishop, Lowell, and Arendt -- in literature and cultural criticism. Burt considers the ways in which Jarrell's efforts and achievements encompassed the concerns of his time, from teen culture to World War II to the Cuban Missile Crisis; the book asks, too, how those efforts might speak to us now.

Professor Seymour Itzkoff asserts that the United States' decline in economic power and productivity is due to a decrease in our national intelligence profile. The author, Professor of Education and Child Study at Smith College, argues that the U.S.'s social disintegration is due to the fact that ...

Professor Seymour Itzkoff asserts that the United States' decline in economic power and productivity is due to a decrease in our national intelligence profile. The author, Professor of Education and Child Study at Smith College, argues that the U.S.'s social disintegration is due to the fact that there are fewer U.S. citizens of high intelligence, educational potential, and economic productivity. "There are increasingly more children from the lowest classes of all our ethnic groups," says Itzkoff. "Until we can understand this dilemma and change our country's birth patterns, we will never be able to stop our nation's fall."

An appreciation of the modern philosopher & University of Chicago English professor, Richard M. Weaver, & an analysis of the continuing relevance of his best known work, Ideas Have Consequences. This 50th Anniversary essay collection is edited by Weaver's authorized biographer & includes entries by ...

An appreciation of the modern philosopher & University of Chicago English professor, Richard M. Weaver, & an analysis of the continuing relevance of his best known work, Ideas Have Consequences. This 50th Anniversary essay collection is edited by Weaver's authorized biographer & includes entries by various colleagues, friends, & academics who were influenced by Weaver's monumental cultural critique.