184:, 2010). In the clarifying words of Randall herself, “the poet's job, strangely enough, is to ‘unwrite’ by going back to the beginning; to make such speech as we have faithful to ‘things as they are’ rather than to our arrangements of them; to make language live by confronting things with the ‘innocent’ mind of an Adam, by naming them to themselves afresh through the powers of that mind which is somehow continuous with them.” (“Genius of the Shore: The Poetry of Howard Nemerov” by Julia Randall in
17:
76:
serving first as an
Assistant Professor, and from 1966 as Associate Professor, teaching there for eleven years before retiring to write full-time. She was the only woman member of the English Department; among her students were notable writers Lee Smith and Annie Dillard, for whom Randall was an important model as teacher, and, in Dillard's words, as a “woman who has committed her life to her art” (quoted by Nancy Parrish in
176:, 2005) writes: “…Randall succeeds in being both traditional and radically anti-traditional in her poetry… work often probes the Tradition upon which it rests…by engaging the Tradition from a female point-of view, Randall both creates a space for herself and also exposes the male poets’ limitations or blind sides…Setting herself against Wordsworth's ‘egotistical sublime,’ Randall strives to achieve humility before Nature…”
88:, published the first four of her seven books of poetry, won her first National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1966), a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant (1968), and, already a revered poet in Baltimore, was gaining national recognition. As U.S. Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov wrote of her 1965 book,
169:, 2005). R.H.W. Dillard describes this imaginative reach across time and scale when he calls her poems “highly charged entities in which the arcane and the archaic are alloyed with metaphysical passion into an active communion with the colloquial and the immediate.” (“Randall, Julia,” Encyclopedia.com).
492:
Julia
Randall: Special feature: “’Moving in Memory,’ A Reminiscent Appreciation of Julia Randall” by Eleanor Wilner; “On ‘Assorted Masters Perform,’” “On ‘Aubade for Wallace Stevens’ By Moira Egan; “A Personal View: My Aunt and Her Poetry” by Julia Hutton Randall; “Julia Randall: Traditionalist and
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During her years there, though she read at The
Library of Congress and San Francisco State University, she made relatively few public appearances; she had, as well, a principled aversion to self-promotion, “she did not bend to literary fashion…her poetry does not fit comfortably—or at all—among the
95:
In 1973 she retired from teaching to write full time, moving to Glen Arm, Maryland, where she also became an environmental activist, helping to establish preservation ordinances for the Long Green Valley; this devotion to and deep acquaintance with the natural world was echoed in her poetry, as was
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for which she received the inaugural Poets’ Prize, an annual award given by a panel of leading
American poets. In that same year, personal connections and Vermont's commitment to environmental activism drew her (with her perennial pair of terriers) back to North Bennington, where she settled
58:
Julia
Randall was born June 15, 1923, in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended Calvert School, and later Bryn Mawr School, graduating in 1941; in 1945 she received a B.A. in English from Bennington College in Vermont. After a year of medical school, a job as technician at the Harvard Biological
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Of her lyricism, Mary Kinzie has said that
Randall writes “ a free verse as exact and rhythmic as fugue,” and poet Eleanor Wilner writes: “…Julia Randall's free verse has a long training of the ear behind it, and her cadenced, contrapuntal music is all the livelier for being free to play without
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Three themes recur in the many reviews of Julia
Randall's work: the exceptional musicality of her lyric poetry, the anti-Romantic and more intimate way in which she approaches nature than her forebears, and the wit and intellect with which she combines the personal and the perennial, putting the
109:)––all of which kept her work from being better known. Nevertheless, she was reviewed and admired by many of her peers, received the Percy Bysshe Shelley Memorial Award of The Poetry Society of America for the body of her work in 1980, a second National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982.
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une; they divorced in 1962. She taught at the evening school of the Johns
Hopkins University (1950–1952), the Paris Branch of the University of Maryland (1952–1953), the Peabody Conservatory (1957–58), and Towson State (1958–1962). In 1962 she joined the English faculty at Hollins College,
179:
Of Julia
Randall's rejection of the tradition's separation from (and assumed superiority over) nature, Marilyn Hacker writes: “I have read few contemporary poets whose love and attention for the natural world so clearly integrated and included the thinking human creature, and human artifact,
151:
On May 22, 2005, she died at her
Bennington home from heart disease at the age of 81. The Julia Randall papers (1930–2001) can be found in the Special Collections of the Hollins University Library.
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Moira Egan said, "Her poetry is lean and spare.... She used a quiet care to describe the landscape of Maryland and the interior landscape of her own memory, her sense of loss and her own mortality."
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fixed constraints—an aural music accompanied by another: the deep referential music of recurring emblematic figures whose names send resonant echoes down the otherwise silent corridors of time.” (
29:(June 15, 1923–May 22, 2005) was an American poet, professor, and environmental activist; recipient of many honors for her poetry, she published seven books of poetry culminating in
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92:: “I had been getting glumly used to the notion that lyrical poetry was over for the present…And then came this beautiful collection…’Praise to the end!’”
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Spring 2009, Vol. 35, No.1), her honors include the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America (1980), the Poets’ Prize (1988) for her book
562:
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Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Poetry Review and The American Scholar.
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510:“Appalachian,” “Bloodroot,” “The Coast,” “The Company,” “Prothalamium,” “Question: of the Effects of Love,” “Two Rhymes for Anne Williams”
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Of the originality and intellectual challenge of Randall's poetry, the way it changes the deep sources it draws from, Meg Schoerke (
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Her poems appeared in various anthologies, including Poesia Americana del dopoguerra, Ed. Rizzardi, Schwarz (Milan, 1958);
96:
her resistance to the land's desecration by developers. During those years she published three more books, including
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33:(Louisiana State University Press, 1992). Described as “one of America's purest and most original lyric poets” (
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John Dorsey of the Baltimore Sun described her as "one of the most intellectual poets of the 20th century."
16:
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Laboratory, she returned to Baltimore, poetry and an M.A. (1950) from Johns Hopkins University.
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Kelly, Jacques (May 25, 2005). "Julia Randall, 81, poet who focused on loss of countryside".
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2009 by Marilyn Hacker (The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2010), pp. 38–39.
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eds., Guy Owen, Mary C. Williams, Louisiana State University Press (1979); and
188:, eds. Dillard, Garrett, Moore, Athens, GA, U of Georgia Press, 1971, p. 345)
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8. “Julia Randall: Rebel child to rebel poet,” by John Dorsey,
520:(online), July, 2018 (Originally published on WOMPO listserv website
513:“The Trees Win Every Time: Reading Julia Randall” by Marilyn Hacker,
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6. “The Poet and the Taxi-Cab-Driver Test,” review of
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18. ”Julia Randall, 81, poet who focused on loss of countryside,”
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especially language, with that world (“The Trees Win Every Time,”
80:, LSU, 1999). During those years, she wrote reviews for the
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105:“schools” that squared off against each other…” (Meg Schoerke,
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Western literary tradition to her own anti-traditional uses.
534:. Includes a critical piece on her poetry by R.H.W. Dillard.
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Don’t Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review,
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Mezzo Cammin: An Online Journal of Formal Poetry by Women
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21. “The Trees Win Every Time: Reading Julia Randall” in
247:(Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, LA, 1992)
241:(Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, LA, 1987)
451:, New Series, Vol. 16, No.1 (Winter, 1994), pp. 189–197
396:
12. “The Double Dream of Julia Randall” by Mary Kinzie,
223:(University of North Carolina Press: Raleigh, NC, 1965)
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In 1952 she married Kenneth Sawyer, art critic for the
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ed. James Smith, University of Arkansas Press (2009).
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eds. Florence Howe and Ellen Bass, Doubleday (1973);
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20. “How Good to Hear You Singing,” by Mary Kinzie,
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7. “The Words of the Tribe,” review of
425:15. “Julia Randall's Poetry: Spirited Creation,”
112:She was regularly published in leading journals:
363:9. The Poetry Chronicle, review of
186:The Sounder Few: Essays from the Hollins Critic
134:No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women,
78:Lee Smith, Annie Dillard and the Hollins Group
422:, Vol. 47, No.22 (Summer, 1993), pp. 376–393
382:, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Winter, 1982/83) pp. 89–90
8:
472:, vol. 187, No. 5 (Feb., 2006), pp. 397–405
440:, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp.570–578
342:, Vol.78, No. 2 (Spring, 1970), pp. 358–365
320:, Vol. 42, No.2 (Spring, 1966), pp. 332–336
245:The Path to Fairview, New and Selected Poems
211:e (Contemporary Poetry: Baltimore, MD, 1952)
31:The Path to Fairview: New and Selected Poems
371:, Vol. 36, No.2 (Summer, 1982), pp.319–333
323:5. “Gifts of Form,” review of
309:, Vol. 19, No.6 (Spring, 1966), pp.146–155
142:Contemporary Southern Poetry: An Anthology,
128:, Ed. John A. Allen, Prentice-Hall (1971);
385:11. “Elpenor among the Shades,” review of
298:, Vol.108, No. 4 (July, 1966), pp.272–276
279:1. “The Making of an Original,” review of
217:(Contemporary Poetry: Baltimore, MD, 1960)
411:, Vol.5, No.10/11 (July, 1988), pp.23–24
287:, Vol.85, No. 6 (March, 1955),pp.366–368
353:, Vol. 118, No1 (April, 1971), p. 35–40
132:, ed. Ann Stanford, McGraw-Hill (1972);
374:10. “A Variety of Harmonies, review of
312:4. “Solitude and Isolation,” review of
257:
403:13. “A Pocketful of Poets,” review of
400:, Vol.XX, No.1 (Feb., 1983), pp. 1–15
331:, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1970), pp. 143–151
229:(Alfred A. Knopf: New York, NY, 1969)
118:Borestone Mountain Best Poems of 1964
7:
360:, Aug. 29, 1976, Section D, pp. 1–3
290:2. “Five Poets,” includes review of
124:, ed. Louis Rubin, Virginia (1967);
593:20th-century American women writers
393:No. 57 (Summer, 1982), pp. 159–171
140:, ed. David Kerdia, Morrow (1978);
461:19. Obituaries, “Julia Randall,”
235:(Elpenor Books: Chicago, IL, 1981)
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608:Goucher College faculty and staff
481:Essays on Poets and Poetry, 1987-
63:Personal life and academic career
432:16. Poetry Chronicle, review of
563:Johns Hopkins University alumni
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521:
517:Literary Nest Poetry Journal
628:21st-century American women
588:20th-century American poets
409:The Women's Review of Books
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618:Hollins University faculty
506:; a brief bio; poems from
130:The Women Poets in English
613:Peabody Institute faculty
578:Towson University faculty
573:Bennington College alumni
558:Harvard University alumni
338:by Frederick K. Sanders,
138:I Sing the Song of Myself
54:Early years and education
623:American women academics
120:, Pacific Books (1965);
98:Moving in Memory (1987),
598:Bryn Mawr School people
499:, Vol.1, Issue 2, 2005
318:The Virginia Quarterly
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316:by Irvin Ehrenpreis,
314:The Puritan Carpenter
303:The Puritan Carpenter
292:The Puritan Carpenter
221:The Puritan Carpenter
90:The Puritan Carpenter
82:Baltimore Evening Sun
19:
603:Poets from Baltimore
583:American women poets
504:poetryfoundation.org
447:by Lawrence Joseph,
445:The Path to Fairview
434:The Path to Fairview
416:The Path to Fairview
389:by Terence Diggory,
477:Unauthorized Voices
465:(May 23/26, 2005).
436:by Emily Grosholz,
407:by Marilyn Hacker,
367:by Emily Grosholz,
305:by William Dickey,
192:Critical commentary
182:Unauthorized Voices
45:Fellowship (1957).
420:The Georgia Review
418:by Fred Chappell,
398:The Hollins Critic
340:The Sewanee Review
327:by Philip Cooper,
294:by Mark McClosky,
203:Poetry collections
107:Mezzo Cammin, 2005
21:
532:Encyclopedia. com
463:Bennington Banner
456:The Baltimore Sun
449:The Kenyon Review
438:The Hudson Review
378:by Colette Inez,
369:The Hudson Review
329:The Kenyon Review
307:The Hudson Review
281:The Solstice Tree
268:The Baltimore Sun
122:The Hollins Poets
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530:Randall, Julia.
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380:Prairie Schooner
349:by Daisy Aldan,
283:by A.V.Krinkin,
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493:Rebel,”
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