Julia Randall

Template:Refimprove

Julia Randall (1923-2005). Courtesy Prairie Schooner.

Julia Van Ness Randall (June 15, 1923 - May 22, 2005) was an American poet.

Life

Randall was born and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.

She graduated from Bryn Mawr School in 1941, from Bennington College with a degree in English, and from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminar with a master's degree.

She attended both Johns Hopkins Medical School and Harvard University, but found that medicine and teaching did not leave her enough time to write poetry.

She wrote during the summers, and taught in various schools: the Hopkins evening school, then known as McCoy College; a University of Maryland branch in Paris; Goucher College; the Peabody Conservatory; Towson University; and what is now known as Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She retired from teaching in 1973.

During the 1970s and 1980s she lived in Baltimore, where she became active in the environmental movement, campaigning to preserve the Long Green Valley from development and pollution. Much of the land in question was later placed under preservation ordinances.

In 1987, she moved to Vermont, where she lived until her death.

Randall died aged 81 in North Bennington, Vermont. She is buried in South Hawley Cemetery in Hawley, Franklin co., Massachusetts.

Writing

Randall was a formalist: her work used rhyme and meter long past the time when they were considered fashionable by the U.S. poetry scene of the 20th century. Even her poems in free verse use techniques like alliteration, assonance, and internal rhyme .

On her death, the Baltimore Sun called her an "environmental activist whose taut verse mourned the loss of Baltimore's countryside.... She channeled much of her environmental emotion into her poems, prompting Stephen Margulies to write in a 1987 Sun review of one of her books, 'Maryland is her Eden.'"

Critical reputation

John Dorsey of the Baltimore Sun described her as "one of the most intellectual poets of the 20th century."

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."

Recognition

Her poetry was included in No More Masks, an anthology of American women's poetry published in 1974. She received the inaugural, 1988 Poets' Prize for her volume Moving in Memory.

In 1980, she received the Percy Bysshe Shelley Award from the American Poetry Society in recognition of her body of work.

Publications

• The Solstice Tree: Poems. Baltimore, MD: Contemporary Poetry, 1952.
• Mimic August: Poems. Baltimore, MD: Contemporary Poetry, 1960.
• The Puritan Carpenter. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1965.
• Adam's Dream: Poems. New York: Knopf, 1969.
• The Farewells: Poems. Chicago: Elpenor Press, 1981.
• Moving in Memory: Poems. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.
• The Path to Fairview: New and selected poems. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "Maid's Song"
• Julia Randall at Mezzo Cammin (5 poems)
• Julia Randall 1924-2005 at the Poetry Foundation

Books

• Julia Randall at Amazon.com

About

• "Julia Randall's poetry: spirited creation," Baltimore Sun, 1993
• "Julia Randall, 81, poet who focused on loss of countryside" obituary, Baltimore Sun, May 25, 2005.
• Schoerke, Meg. "Julia Randall: Traditionalist and Rebel". Mezzo Cammin: An Online Journal of Formal Poetry by Women 1 (2). http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2006&iss=2&cat=criticism&page=schoerke. Retrieved 2009-05-11.