ABSTRACT
R andall jarrell's dedication to poetry could be unnerving. Aspart of a lengthy tribute to his old friend and fellow poet, Robert Lowell (1967) wrote,
I have never known anyone who so connected what his friends wrote with their lives, or their lives with what they wrote. This could be trying: whenever we turned out something Randall felt was unworthy or a falling off, there was a coolness in all one's relations with him. You felt that even your choice in neckties wounded him.
