Little Friend, Little Friend – Jarrell’s Powerful, Quiet, Short Homage to America’s War

Introduction by Daniel Mallock

A great poem ought to be huge – grand in scope, but not necessarily excessive in length. Great poetry should tell massive stories with multiple layers concisely and artfully. One doesn’t need obscure references, convoluted language, nor self-congratulatory internal winkings. Poetry is supposed to be honest. A great poem should pack a serious punch of power and style and insight.

It’s a complicated world and life is complex, confusing, and manifestly difficult to fathom. Poetry is at its does best when it illustrates and even explains something of life and humanity in a form that is reachable and readily understood, entertaining and impressive. Overly complex poetry tends to be more a demonstration of the art and poet rather than anything that might tend to educate, enlighten, or entertain the reader.

I’ve heaped praise and criticism on the Nashville Fugitives on these pages already. I believe the finest Civil War poem of the 20th century is by one of them – “Lee in the Mountains”, by Donald Davidson. Conversely, the worst Civil War poem of the last century was perpetrated by Allen Tate another Fugitive. His poem “Ode to the Confederate Dead” is something of a crime; a criminal cruelty dumped upon an entire country by an otherwise credible poet. Tate’s poem has long been considered a classic, a suitable tribute to the Confederate dead – the truth is that both assertions are false.

Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead” is a brilliant poem conceived by another writer associated with the Fugitives (Lowell studied under John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College). These three poems represent the finest and the worst 20th century poetic treatments of the Civil War. So, it is somewhat ironic that one of the finest poets of WW2 should also be a student of Ransom, and a colleague of Robert Lowell at Kenyon – another Fugitive associate and Nashvillian. Let’s now complete the Nashville connection…

Perhaps the greatest American poet of WW2 is Randall Jarrell. This poet who would write of bombing raids and dying ball-turret gunners, who would bring the reality of the war into his poetry so powerfully, so lyrically, and so successfully – was born in Nashville and would later teach at Vanderbilt, the very home of the Fugitives.

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) could embed the nitty gritty of war into his work – the machinery, the oil, the gunmetal, the equipment of death and destruction. He would populate his poems with people who de-populated cities, the air crews of the Eighth Air Force, for example. Jarrell brought the casualties, the blood, the losses, the mechanics of war together in such a way as to bring the war home to the reader – Jarrell’s poems make World War Two real; every casualty is strongly felt.

As with most survivors of war, Jarrell was deeply affected if not scarred by his war experiences. Jarrell served in the Army Air Corps (precursor to the US Air Force) working in a control tower. He had enlisted to fly aircraft but failed to qualify. Jarrell went on to a very successful academic and writing career after the war becoming a noted critic and poet. He died in 1965 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in a traffic accident. It is not known if Jarrell’s death was a suicide or an accident, but his bouts with depression and the intense emotional depth of his poetry give one pause. Robert Lowell referred to his old Kenyon colleague as one of the “best lyric poets of the past”.

Jarrell’s war poems are jarring, and very real. He brings the experience home and slams it down on the page so that the reader must deal with it, somehow. As with so many of Jarrell’s WW2 poems reading “Little Friend, Little Friend” is an emotional experience, a jarring slap on the side of the head with the truth and ugly reality of war. The ugliness and horror of war can be shared via the beauty of poetry, with the obvious irony there for all to see.

One of Jarrell’s greatest poems is but a fragment and challenges the definition of poetry itself. It is very short, and very powerful. It seems to embrace the men and machines of the war, and put them back in the air where Jarrell always knew them to be – doing their terrible damage and raining death down upon the cities and one another.

David Perkins wrote, “They are vivid and moving incidents of combat, told with an exceptionally sensitive psychological insight and moral perplexity.” (A History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 393.) Jarrell tells his stories in beautiful language, with little fanfare, and intense emotional power. His poems are novels on a page, huge stories of massive events and shattered people and cities all scrunched up on the page like a crashed bomber – and rebuilt in poetry by way of explanation.

“Little Friend, Little Friend” is a radio transmission/poem between a bomber pilot and a fighter pilot flying in hostile skies. They are there for each other to a certain extent, always just out of range. They do what they can for each other. And in these few lines is a very powerful, very simplified view of the comradery, ugliness, bravery, and extremes of fighting wars in the air. Jarrell is one of America’s most brilliant poets. It is a privilege to present this brilliant fragment/poem of Jarrell on my blog.

“Little Friend, Little Friend”
by Randall Jarrell, 1945

. . . . Then I heard the bomber call me in:

“Little Friend, Little Friend, I got two
engines on fire. Can you see me, Little
Friend?”

I said “I’m crossing right over you.
Let’s go home.”

The Bomber
Photo Courtesy of “100% Geek”

Little Friend
Photo Courtesy of “HistoryLink101″