randall jarrell
... that successfully unites homely, often humorous American images with the exalted tone of Rilke’s Duino Elegies; a beautiful dramatic monologue, ‘The Lost Children,’ based on a real dream, of his wife Mary Jarrell’s; and two wonderful poems about Jarrell’s own boyhood, ‘The Lost World’ and ‘Thinking of the Lost World’” (Ferguson 210). Another critic states, “Randall Jarrell’s poetry will probably always discomfort his fondest readers [and] he was a writer of unbelievably catholic interests—the collected poems are a tour of things from Freud to German Romanticism to middle-century supermarket America—and of unerring critical taste” (Weisberg 211). Ferguson mentions that “in the most painful of all his poems, ‘The Woman at the Washington Zoo,’ the woman is surely self- pitying, but she speaks from a life that is empty except for the constant anguish of loneliness which is her own reality, and she does not ask for sympathy—how pallid and useless that would be—but change: release from her dreadful bondage” (210). The woman mentioned in this statement is asking people to give greater change to the world and is trying to make up for her loneliness. This award winning poem has helped Jarrell to be recognized by some of the top poets in the business. As the critic Johnathon Galassi stated about some poems such as “The Dead in Melanesia” and “The Woman at the Washington Zoo,” “in these poems, and in some of his sympathetic appreciations of other poets, Jarrell achieved that sympathy of enthusiasm and disinterestedness, which earned him a lasting place among the significant American writers.” The speaker of the poem is pessimistic because she talks about death and the way life is going to pass her by without giving her a second glance. The speaker is full of loneliness, the best example of this is, “the world goes by my cage and never sees me” (line 20). She is also aging, as shown by the statement saying, “As I am trapped but not, themselves, the trap, aging, but without knowledge of their age, kept safe here, knowing not of death, for death” (lines 16-18). Finally, the speaker is involved with the government, using phrases such as, “the saris go by me from the embassies,” (line 1) or “neither from my chief, the deputy chief assistant, nor his chief” (lines 9-10). The repetition of words, phrases and grammatical structures creates a feeling of routine and alienation. Jarrell uses the repetition of words to give examples of the different routines and the alienation of the woman. There are many illustrations of this throughout the poem, such as, “cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet” (line 2). This example is telling the reader that her clothes are different and they are not the same as other people’s clothes, such as the fact that they came from space. Another instance is, “This print of mine, that has kept its color alive through so many cleanings; this dull null navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so to my bed, so to my grave” (lines 5-8). This exemplar describes the boring, dull life of the speaker. It also portrays the routine that the woman goes through everyday, wearing and cleaning what seems like the same clothes all the time. Jarrell uses more repetition when he writes, “Complaints, no comment: neither from my chief, the deputy chief assistant, nor his chief” (lines 9-10). This paradigm shows that the only person who is complaining about their clothes is the woman. Her boss, the chief, does not worry about the clothes she is wearing, but rather the quality of work that she accomplishes. A final example of repetition in this poem is, “you know what I was, you see what I am: change me, change me” (lines 32-33)! She is referring to the vulture, which represents death, wanting it to change her and to make her a new person. The imagery centers on color, clothing and the animals. There is a great amount of imagery used in this poem. The first example given to the reader is, “cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet” (line 2). This line speaks of the clothes that the woman wears and the way the garments are not the same as other peoples. A second example is, “this print of mine, that has kept its color alive through so many cleanings; this dull null navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so to my bed, so to my grave” (lines 5-8). This imagery shows the dull colors of the woman’s clothes and the faded clothes that she wears day after day. Another instance of imagery is, “body that no sunlight dyes” (line 12). Randall Jarrell uses this line to show that neither the sunlight nor any other part of nature has an effect on her body. A fourth example in this poem comes in lines 20-24, “the world goes by my cage and never sees me. And there come not to me, as come to these, the wild beasts, sparrows pecking the llamas’ grain, pigeons settling on the bears’ bread, buzzards tearing the meat the flies have clouded.” Jarrell uses this imagery to sho...