Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Randall Jarrell's "Children Selecting Books in a Library" delves into the world of youthful imagination juxtaposed with the complex realities of adult life. It is a celebration and a lamentation, exploring the intricacies of childhood, storytelling, and the ever-changing human experience. The poem situates the child in a library, a traditional space of learning and discovery, but here represented as a threshold between the realms of the known and the unknown, the mundane and the magical.

The poem opens with a vivid imagery of the wall adorned "with beasts and gods," suggesting a rich tapestry of stories that span the gamut of human experience-from mythology to fairy tales. The child is described as "food-gathering," an echo of primitive instincts that transcend into the quest for stories, for wisdom. Then suddenly, the figure of Care, "the grey-eyed one," emerges from a mural to "whisper" words of "doom as ecumenical as dawn." Care personifies a sort of existential worry that children are just starting to become aware of, introducing an ominous note to the child's pursuit of stories.

When Jarrell writes, "Their tales are full of sorcerers and ogres/Because their lives are," he touches on the escapism literature offers but also emphasizes how stories mirror life's complexities. Stories are means to confront the "capricious infinite," which is as unpredictable and overwhelming as the adults in a child's life. Literature becomes a survival tool, a "cure for Everychild's diseases," in navigating a world where "strength/And wit are useless."

The poem progresses to consider the adults-referred to as "Us men"-who find "wolves, mice, bears bore." Here, the dismissal of stories represents a disenchantment with the imagination, which often occurs in adulthood. The poem argues that this disenchantment is to our detriment. We are all-wolves, mice, bears, children, gods, and men-in perpetual quest, "seeking ... who knows except themselves?" Here, Jarrell suggests that the search for meaning remains our collective mission, regardless of age.

Towards the end, Jarrell posits that if we find solace or escape in another's story-like "Swann's Way" or a tale "east/Of the sun, west of the moon"-it is because we exchange "another's sorrow for our own; another's/Impossibilities, still unbelieved in, for our own." Literature becomes a medium of emotional bartering, where sorrow and joy, reality and fantasy, are exchanged in a ceaseless cycle.

The poem culminates in contemplating CHANGE-the inevitable, ceaseless metamorphosis that governs life. It's "dear to all things not to themselves endeared," emphasizing the universality of change, how it is craved by those in despair and feared by those in happiness. The act of reading, then, becomes a temporary sanctuary from this overwhelming constancy of change.

In "Children Selecting Books in a Library," Jarrell captures the myriad complexities of human existence, seen through the microcosm of a library. It becomes a space where the imagination is nurtured, where sorrows and joys are bartered, and where both children and adults come to terms with the unfathomable vastness of experience and emotion that makes us quintessentially human.

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