John Crowe Ransom
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John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888 - July 3, 1974) was an American poet, essayist, and social commentator. Ransom, the third of four children of a Methodist minister, was born in Pulaski, Tennessee. He entered Vanderbilt University at the age of fifteen, graduating in 1909 at age 21. From 1910 to 1913 he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England. In 1914 Ransom was appointed to the English department at Vanderbilt, but his career was interrupted by World War I where he served as an artillery officer in France; he returned to Vanderbilt after the war where he remained until 1937. Ransom was married to Robb Reavill on December 22, 1920, with whom their daughter Helen was born on January 17, 1922.
After his return to Vanderbilt, Ransom became associated with the group of writers there known as the Fugitives, a literary group whose other members included Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. It was their influence that led Ransom, who thought of himself primarily as a philosopher, to begin writing poetry. Often referred to as a "major minor poet", Ransom primarily wrote short poems examining the ironic and unsentimental nature of life; one preferred technique of his was the use of regular meter to highlight the incongruity between the steady rhythm of the words and the unsteady moments that make up human existence.
His first collection of poetry, Poems about God (1919), was praised by Robert Frost and Robert Graves, but Ransom refused to have these early poems republished, no longer considering them to be representative of his work. Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927) represent the height of his poetic output, upon which much of his literary reputation is based; though Ransom wrote poetry sporadically thereafter ("tinkering", he called it), he believed he had no more themes upon which to write. Despite the brevity of his poetic career, Ransom's work won him the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1951; his Selected Poems published in 1945 received the National Book Award in 1964.
In 1930 Ransom along with 11 other Southern Agrarians published the agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, which bemoaned the tide of modernity that appeared to be sweeping away traditional southern and American culture. Ransom, who supported the manifesto's assertion that the industrialization of modern society was a dehumanizing force, defended its position against numerous attacks, publishing various essays influenced by his agrarian beliefs. His certainty waned, however, by the mid-thirties; in 1936 he had expressed some doubts about the position and in 1945 publicly renounced it. This eventual shift in position was foreshadowed by one of his most famous essays, "God Without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy" (1930), a philosophically informed defense of religion and the stern, "inscrutable" God of the Old Testament as opposed to the permissive Jesus, there equated with modern science. Whatever "traditionalist" assertions are to be found in the work are overshadowed by its critique and rejection of the (American) religious offerings of his day.
In 1937 Ransom departed Vanderbilt and accepted a position at Kenyon College in Ohio. After arriving, he became the editor of the newly-founded Kenyon Review (a position he retained until his retirement from Kenyon in 1959).
Ransom was one of the prominent figures in the school of literary criticism known as the New Criticism, which gained its name from his 1941 volume of essays The New Criticism. This school, which dominated American literary thought throughout the early to middle 20th century, emphasized close reading, and criticism based on texts themselves rather than information outside the texts. Ransom had argued for more "precise and systematic" analysis of texts in a 1937 essay, "Criticism, Inc." He was critical of several aspects of the movement, however, as well as of poet T. S. Eliot, who became the New Critical darling in Ransom's time.
Ransom remained an active essayist throughout his career extending into his retirement. In 1966 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A collection of previously-unpublished essays from the Kenyon Review were published in 1972. Ransom died in Gambier, Ohio, and his ashes were buried behind Chalmers Library on the campus of Kenyon College.
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[edit] On Being a Minor Poet
A major poet could be expected to labor over great works reminding the audience of his grandeur through Sestinas, Epics, or a philosophical discovery; where, a minor poet does not carry such high expectations and is free to explore subjects more simple and delightful to themselves. John Crowe Ransom knew his poems were minor and used the opportunity to explore domestic themes and southern life. Being a minor poet also allowed him to use simple diction ironically, playing off the intellectual conontations of the words.
[edit] Use of Meter
John Crowe Ransom is characterized as using a traditional English meter that is altered to fit the pacing of the poem. John Crowe Ransom will base his meter on the traditional meters and alter them to fit the flow of the poem. For example, in his poem Blue girls, the meter halts the lines to produce a pause at certain moments and add emphasis.
[edit] Diction
John Crowe Ransom's family was very literate for being middle class. As a child he would spend his time reading through his family's library and even engage in passioned discussions with his father. From this background, John Crowe Ransom uses archaic diction in his poems.
[edit] Themes
A major theme between John Crowe Ransom poems is that of the domestic life. John Crowe Ransom is considered a Nashville poet and grouped with agrarian poets for the Southern aspects in his writing. In the poem "Janet Walking" "Ransom mixes modernist with old-fashioned country rhetoric" (Tillinghast) in accordance to his Southern style.
[edit] References
- Modern American Poetry: John Crowe Ransom
- Grammer, John. "Fairly Agrarian." Mississippi Quarterly 52.1 (1998)
- Tillinghast, Richard. "John Crowe Ransom: Tennessee's major minor poet." New Criterion 15.6 (1997)
