Randall Jarrell, North Carolina's best poet, died at age 51 in 1965. Twenty years later, Mary Jarrell, his courageous and indefatigable widow, published a collection of his letters with Houghton Mifflin. Now an expanded edition, "Randall Jarrell's Letters," comes from University of Virginia Press in sturdy paperback ($24.95, 573 pages), and its new inclusions are invaluable.

These are his letters to Peter Taylor, the celebrated novelist and short story writer, and to Eleanor Ross Taylor, Peter's wife and a poet of strong and eccentric achievement. These letters had not been published before because of permission problems, and, in this edition, the two dozen appear all together at the end of the book. The other letters are in chronological order; the decision to package the additions in this way must have been an economic one.

This necessary arrangement does not work out badly. After the letters, beginning with one to Allen Tate in 1939 and ending with one to Adrienne Rich in 1965, we pick up again with the Taylor letters from 1947 to 1965. These form a kind of coda to the volume, restating and embellishing themes, ideas and tones that are in the other letters, recalling them and showing them in new lights.

They are important to have because of the special relationship of the two men. Along with the poet Robert Lowell, Taylor was the oldest and closest of Jarrell's friends. In a letter written in his last month, Jarrell remarks, "You've been my best friend since 1947, and Mary and I have always thought of you and Eleanor as our best friends, and it certainly won't ever be any different."

If it was the happiest of friendships, that may be because the two were in some ways of opposite temperaments. Jarrell was an intense loner who disliked social gatherings and preferred the company of books, animals and recordings of Richard Strauss to gossip, small talk and the usual blather of parties. Taylor was a thorough extrovert who loved every sort of social exchange, adored famous literati and yearned to hear (though not to repeat) even malicious gossip. Mary Jarrell draws their social comportments neatly: "While Jarrell stationed himself in one spot, wishing he'd never come, Taylor circulated with shining eyes, wishing it would never end."

One of the strongest bonds between them was respect for each other's work and for certain masterpieces of the past. Both of them held Anton Chekhov, the unsurpassable Russian master of drama and short story, in awestruck reverence. If Taylor was not so passionate as Jarrell about operas like "Elektra" and "Der Rosenkavalier," he equaled his friend's passion for the works of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

It is unfortunate that we do not yet have the letters the Taylors addressed to Jarrell. It would be fascinating to know what the both of them thought of such poems as "Cinderella," "The Black Swan," "8th Air Force" or "Children Selecting Books in a Library."

But we do know what the poet thought in 1960 of one of Taylor's best-known stories: "This is a straight fan letter ... about "Miss Leonora When Last Seen." It really is one of your best, very best, stories -- worthy of Hawthorne, and the best straight allegory about America I've ever read. Everything about her is so real, and what all the details stand for is best of all. You really have managed to realize in a work of art the whole way you (and we) feel about how the United States has changed; and she does embody so beautifully the best purer things about the old -- new, I mean -- America."

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