by Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell-Time Line
The library at the University of North Carolina offers this time line of author Randall Jarrell's life. Choose one significant event from each of the six periods of Jarrell's life and record them in the Web Links Activity Log. Then make a similar time line of your life, categorizing significant events that took place into "periods" of your choosing. Add to the time line any events that you would like to see happen in the future.

B-17 Flying fortress: A Brief History
To learn more about the airplane described in "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," visit this Boeing Company Web page dedicated to the B-17 bomber. After viewing the photograph of this classic warplane, can you better visualize how vulnerable the gunner was in his position in the ball turret? Write another poem that describes the speaker's thoughts upon his first view of the plane.