Published on Modern American Poetry (https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org)


John Crowe Ransom

Poet Description: 

Born in Pulaski, Tennessee, John Crowe Ransom was educated at Vanderbilt University and Christ Church College at Oxford University in England. After World War I service on the front in France, he joined Vanderbilt's faculty, where he helped lead the Agrarian Movement. It counted Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren among its members, generally resisted racial integration, urged a renewal of religious belief in the context of a hierarchical society, and championed a southern agrarian economy as an antidote to northern industrialism. Later, at Kenyon College, he helped shape American New Criticism, with its preference for analysis of poems according to their internal character rather than their historical context. Elegant, ironic, carefully crafted, Ransom's own poems repeatedly attempt characterizations of fundamental differences between men and women. After 1927, most of his poetry writing consisted in repeatedly revising the poems he had already published, which he issued in new editions of his Selected Poems in 1945, 1963, and 1969. His ideas about gender are succinctly articulated in the titles to the first two sections of the Selected Poems: "The Innocent Doves" and "The Manliness of Men." Among his critical essays is a notoriously contemptuous piece on Edna St. Vincent Millay.  

Race/Ethnicity: 
European [1]
Picture: 
John Crowe Ransom Portrait
Gender: 
Male [2]
Sexuality: 
Straight [3]
First Name: 
John Crowe
Last Name: 
Ransom
Birth & Death Dates: 
Monday, April 30, 1888 to Wednesday, July 3, 1974
School of Poetry: 
Other [4]
Birth Place: 
Pulaski , Tennessee
United States
See map: Google Maps [5]
Tennessee US
Death Place: 
Gambier , Ohio
United States
See map: Google Maps [6]
Ohio US
Group visibility: 
Private - accessible only to group members

Source URL: https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/poet/john-crowe-ransom

Links
[1] https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/category/race-ethnicity/european
[2] https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/category/gender/male
[3] https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/category/sexuality/straight
[4] https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/school-poetry/other
[5] http://maps.google.com?q=46.880607+-87.363281+%28%2C+Pulaski%2C+TN%2C+%2C+us%29
[6] http://maps.google.com?q=40.376729+-82.403262+%28%2C+Gambier%2C+OH%2C+%2C+us%29