JOLLY DAYS

Randall Jarrell

I've been reading No Other Book, a collection of brilliant essays by the poet and critic Randall Jarrell. You might not agree with him, but his nuance and freedom from ideology make you grateful for his contribution. Bad criticism doesn't make things worse, it just doesn't do anything. Good criticism can point, at its best, and get you excited and want to experience the work or consider it even if there are problems with it.

I thought I'd quote from him the next few posts, and to start, why not point to something that seems to me dead wrong: his rejection of abstract expressionism on fairly simple terms. Jarrell says,

[Abstract expressionism…] is the specialized, intensive exploitation of one part of such painting, and the rejection of other parts and of the whole.

Earlier painting is a kind of metaphor: the world of the painting itself, of the oil-and-canvas objects and their and oil-and-canvas relations, is one that stands for — that has come into being because of the world of flesh-and-blood objects…

He goes on like this, decrying the lack of representation, of clear reference. You can understand the despair — he wants to recognize things. He was a literalist by inclination — a strange spin for the mind of a poet. Jarrell didn't understand that art divided up about the time of Matisse into an art of sensibility and an art of the mind. AE is an art of sensibility, where you ride the energy. Much of current painting involves the art of the mind — conceptualized, illustrations of sophisticated and often shallow theory. On the other hand, arts of sensibility can go wrong by devolving into narcissistic indulgence. But both approaches don't have to resolve to their worst extensions. I don't know how you could look at Gorky or De Kooning or Pollock, and miss the energy, the sensitivity and feeling in the work. Admittedly, abstract expressionism is finally a poignant pipe dream, a yearning for freedom, that very much expresses the American spirit and its despairs.

But Jarrell is honest in a real sense, and well spoken, a tremendously sensitive and subtle mind, and you read him with understanding.

Here is the conclusion to his poem, in the voice of a fictive character attempting to reassure herself of her worth; the conclusion to the poem, Next Day:

How young I seem; I am exceptional;

I think of all I have.

But really no one is exceptional,

No one has anything, I'm anybody,

I stand beside my grave

Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

No question Jarrell identified. Jarrell was killed by a car while walking by a road. He had been treated for mental illness and had attempted suicide.