8th Annual WML Academic Symposium

Time: 3:30
Room: 312
Presenter(s): Rachel Davis
Title: “No Poetry After Hiroshima”: Jarrell’s “The Lost World” Framed by the Nuclear Age
Developed under the guidance of Dr. Gina Peterman , English

In Randall Jarrell’s poem, “The Lost World,” the child protagonist, implied to be young Jarrell, is alarmed by a fictional comic book in which a mad scientist attempts to destroy the world. This presentation argues that the poem, published in 1963 but set in 1925, is a direct response to the Cold War, and the comic in the poem is a representation of the potential for nuclear war in the 1960s. Jarrell also emphasizes how the Cold War robbed suburban children of innocence, as well as the lasting trauma and paranoia due to growing up during the nuclear age.