Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent Collection of One of 20th Century America's Leading Poets
This collection reveals how talented a poet Allen Tate was. While "Aeneas in Washington" and "Ode to the Confederate Dead" are included in some anthologies, this book reveals the depth of his work. Tate could be very funny--his poem "William Blake" had me laughing my head off. Tate is always interesting and his poems reveal a good deal of this thinking on politics, war, American history and Christianity. Tate was inspired by the poems of the past and showed how they could be crafted even in a period when rhyme, rhythm, form and structure were not always appreciated. The introduction by Christopher Benfey was solid and not too in-depth to become cumbersome. I wish the work had been arranged more by chronology; some of the earlier poems show up at the end and took away from understanding Tate's development over the years.

Tate's Collected Poems
Allen Tate is one of the finest poets of the 20th Century and it is a pleasure to be able to read his poetry again in the fullest collection to date.There are some signature poems like "The Mediterranean" and "Ode to the Confederate Dead" and "The Swimmers" which would stand out in any collection of Modern Poetry.There are minor masterpieces as well, such as "Death of Little Boys" and "Aeneas in Washington" and "Seasons of the Soul" to which a reader would want to return many times.Just reading Tate's poetry at the present time makes one realize how meagre current poetry is and what greatness lies in the past century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Good use of Civil War-era Northern Virginia setting
I was alerted to this book through a Washington Post "rediscovery" book review of neglected, but worthwhile books of the past.As a long time resident of Alexandria, Virginia, I was intrigued by its promise of a local setting.The author makes excellent use of Old Town Alexandria, and local Northern Virginia settings.(Alexandria, Virginia was a Union held city in a state which became the Confederate capital, and was the scene of the first Union fatality of the war.
The author's use of actual surviving communities and even street names from Alexandria and nearby Fairfax County was quite interesting to this reader, though the actual story itself is a bit obtuse, and occasionally more literary than enjoyable.
A quoted reviewer's comparison to "Gone With the Wind"is not totally accurate.The setting is indeed the Civil War and a protagonist does bear some characteristics with Rhett Butler.But "Fathers" is certainly not the rousing adventure-love story of GWTW and may disappoint those who expect it to be.

unexpected
[T]he dominating structure of a great civilized tradition is certain absolutes . . . by which people live, and by which they must continue to live
until in the slow crawl of history new references take their place.
-Allen Tate, Liberalism and Tradition

Man is a creature that in the long run has got to believe in order to know, and to know in order to do.
-Allen Tate

During his lifetime, Allen Tate was considered by no less an authority than T. S. Eliot to be the best American poet of his generation.Yet today, the only one of his poems we really recall is Ode to the Confederate Dead, and even that has a whiff of impropriety about it.He wrote two well regarded biographies, but they're of the Confederate heroes Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.He was also considered an outstanding critic, but criticism has a pretty short shelf life, as each generation discovers authors anew.He was also a participant in and a founder of important literary movements--the Fugitives, the Agrarian movement, and the New Criticism.Yet there's a a certain stench about the politics of these groups, their celebration of Southern ideals sitting ill with the subsequent Civil Rights era.And if Mr. Tate's ambiguous position in regard to race weren't enough to doom him in modern eyes, he was also no gentleman in his treatment of his wife, the fine writer, Caroline Gordon, to whom he was apparently quite flagrantly unfaithful.Add to it all the unfortunate fact that regard for the Confederacy and the Ante-Bellum South has been co-opted to some extent by white supremacists and other idiots and it's surely no surprise that Mr. Tate's reputation has fared poorly.

With all this as baggage, the reader who comes to The Fathers, Mr. Tate's only novel, expecting some kind of gothic version of Gone With the Wind must be forgiven.Instead, while it is fairly Southern gothic, what Mr. Tate offers is a far more complex portrait of a young man, Lacy Buchan, who is torn between the world of his father, Major Lewis Buchan, representing the stereotypical Southern aristocracy, but paralyzed into inaction by the war, and George Posey, Lacy's brother-in-law, a modern man (for example, a capitalist) whose lack of ties to the chivalric tradition lead him to behave in an undisciplined fashion, eventually resulting in tragedy.Lacy's struggle then is to find a middle way, one that learns from and honors the traditions of his father, but which is capable of moving forward into the modern age that George presages, or perhaps into a better future, because tempered by tradition.

The novel is a tad opaque and overwrought for my tastes, but well worth reading.

GRADE : C+

Best Civil War Novel of All Time
This is quite simply the best novel ever written set in and around the Civil War.

A great work
This novel is one of the best written in the United States.While it will delight conservatives for its tender and moving picture of a culture whose traditions and habits are being destroyed, readers of all political stripeswill enjoy reading the Greek like tragic victory/fall of the utilitarian'hero' of the novel.His story is that of modernity, and thus of us all.

one of the finest novels I've read
This is a tremendous work; I cannot fathom why it is not well known outside literary circles unless it is because it was the only novel of its poet/critic author.The style in which it is written is beautiful.Thefirst person narrator gracefully tells a profound story which (to me)leaves lingering mysteries and does so without "trying too hard"or pretention.The story and the style in which it is written fuse into ahaunting masterpiece.I have never sought a literary profession; however,I think that anyone who does so would learn a great deal from this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An American Classic is back in print.
In an age where criticism sounds more and more like the sigh of a dying culture, Tate reminds us of the fundamental truth's of the human condition that are revealed by a certain poetic vision which at once transcends and underscores religion, politics, literature, and poetry.He is a writer that I find myself constantly returning to not merely to gain insight into the particular works in question, but rather to remember the importance of reading literature and poetry in the first place.Tate is one of the best poet's and critics of the 20th century (very much akin to T.S. Eliot in both form and content) but due to his sympathies for the Antebellum South which is heretical in academia, and a growing infatuation with criticism that is divorced from the poetic imagination from which literature springs, Tate is less read than he should be. ... Read more

Product Description
Despite his celebrity and his fame, a series of literary feuds and the huge volume of sources have, until now, precluded a satisfying biography of Allen Tate. Anyone interested in the literature and history of the American South, or in modern letters, will be fascinated by his life. Poetry readers recognize Tate, whom T. S. Eliot once called the best poet writing in America, as the author of some of the twentieth century's most powerful modernist verse. Others know him as a founder of The Fugitive, the first significant poetry journal to emerge from the South. Tate joined William Faulkner and others in launching what came to be known as the Southern Literary Renaissance. In 1930, he became a leader of the Southern Agrarian movement, perhaps America's final potent critique of industrial capitalism. By 1938, Tate had departed politics and written The Fathers, a critically acclaimed novel about the dissolution of the antebellum South. He went on to earn almost every honor available to an American poet. His fatherly mentoring of younger poets, from Robert Penn Warren to Robert Lowell, and of southern novelists--including his first wife, Caroline Gordon--elicited as much rebellion as it did loyalty.

Long-awaited and based on the author's unprecedented access to Tate's personal papers and surviving relatives, Orphan of the South brings Tate to 1938. It explores his attempt, first through politics and then through art, to reconcile his fierce talent and ambition with the painful history of his family and of the South.

Tate was subjected to, and also perpetuated, fictional interpretations of his ancestry. He alternately abandoned and championed Southern culture. Viewing himself as an orphan from a region where family history is identity, he developed a curious blend of spiritual loneliness and ideological assuredness. His greatest challenge was transforming his troubled genealogy into a meaningful statement about himself and Southern culture as a whole. It was this problem that consumed Tate for the first half of his life, the years recorded here.

This portrait of a man who both made and endured American literary history depicts the South through the story of one of its treasured, ambivalent, and sometimes wayward sons. Readers will gain a fertile understanding of the Southern upbringing, education, and literary battles that produced the brilliant poet who was Allen Tate. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Rapidly paced biography of the Confederate general by a major literary figure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Disappointment
I agree with Landess in the preface. This book is poorly researched. It doesn't show us the depth or breath of the man. It would not even be poor historial fiction and is horrid as a biography. It's one strong point is Tate's abilitity to show the Southern feeling on their state rights being violated; along with the comparison of Indian rights being viloent by the North.

Stonewall Jackson: A Hero of America
By reading the book: Stonewall Jackson, by Allen Tate, I have furthered my belief that this was a man of great piety, heroism, chivallry, and freedom.He fought for all these things in his time, yet in our time freedom and the fight to preserve it and the Homeland seem to be of the most importance. The fight for freedom has always been an American ideal, and Tate did an excellent job in depicting how one man committed his whole life to it during the War of Northern Aggression.I stongly reccomend this book to all who desire to reap the truth, and who hold dear the Homeland.

Stonewall Jackson: Hero of America
In reeading the book Stonewall Jackson, by Allen Tate, I have furthered my belief that this was a man of piety, heroism, chivallry, and a true champion of American values.That is to say, General Jackson was a fighter for freedom and the homeland a value which is highly regarded in today's day and age.Tate expressed this idea even when he wrote it 76 years ago.Therefore,I strongly reccomend this book to all who value the American ideal: the fight for freedom.

Stonewall Jackson: Hero of America
In reading the book Stonewall Jackson, by Allen Tate, I have furthered my belief that this was a man of piety, heroism, chivallry, and a true champion of American values.That is to say, General Jackson was a fighter for freedom and the homeland: something which is highly regarded in today's day and age.Tate expressed this idea even when he wrote it 76 years ago.Therefore,I strongly reccomend this book to all who value the American ideal: the fight for freedom.

Good History about a Good Man
Allen Tate wrote "Stonewall Jackson" in 1927 with the intent of restoring some historical reality to the fading memory of the War for Southern Independence.He accomplished his goal, but the book seems betterin retrospect as a whole than it did while reading it page by page.Tateused what to me was an odd, choppy style of writing that slightlycomplicated the story he was telling.He clearly admired Jackson, andafter reading his book my admiration and knowldge of Jackson have improved. Stonewall Jackson is one of America's great heroes for good reason.Evenmembers of the Union Army cheered him when the opportunity presented itselfnear Fredericksburg.As Tate points out, Jackson was a man of principle onand off the battlefield.From his impoverished childhood to hisever-improving performance at West Point there was no way to foretell theheight of fame Jackson would gain in the War for Southern Independence. His performance in the War with Mexico was limited to garrison duty for themost part.When in battle he distinguished himself, but other officers hadshown more brightly for a longer period of time in more battles.Tatereveals the eccentricities of Jackson in subtle ways that leave youwondering what was going on in Jackson's head.He clearly baffled theforces sent against him in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, but many of hisown soldiers were equally baffled.It took some time for his subordinatesto develop a deep and abiding respect for General Jackson, but after helead them to numerous victories against superior forces the bond wasestablished that lasted until his untimely death.One of the greatcontradictions in Jackson's life was his steadfast Christian beliefscontrasted with his unrelenting will to destroy the enemy on thebattlefield.For example, Tate mentions an exchange between Jackson andhis chief surgeon when the surgeon inquired, "How shall we ever copewith the overwhelming numbers of the enemy?"After a long pauseJackson replied, "Kill them, sir!Kill every man."It was thatstrength of will that helped make Jackson the hero that he was and is.Hisloss at Chancellorsville to "friendly fire" was one more nail inthe coffin of the Confederacy.It is, perhaps, inevitable that one shouldspeculate about events at Gettysburg had General Lee had his "rightarm" leading a Corps.This book gives the most plausible answer towhat Jackson meant at the moment of his death when he said, "Let'scross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."Curiously,the answer is at the start of the book, not the end.Allen Tate wrote agood book about a great man that is well worth reading. ... Read more

Product Description
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A comprehensive, clear-eyed, and lyrical biography
Poet, essayist, and Southern Agrarian, Allen Tate brings (brought) to his life of Jefferson Davis not only a tremendous narrative talent, but also a deep understanding of, and sympathy for, the Southern culture that produced Jefferson Davis. But unlike other Southern writers who made Davis a larger-than-life hero of the Lost Cause, Tate pulls no punches in his assessment of the President's weaknesses as well as his strengths, and how they may have crippled the Confederacy from the very beginning.

Tate considers Davis a man of high ideals and great personal honor. At the same time, though, he had a "peculiarly inflexible mind" ("he had not learned anything since about 1843") (p. 197) and a "feeble grasp of human nature" (p. 255). He treated his office as a sort of super-minister of defense, and was never "the leader of the Southern people as a whole" (p. 180). The South could have won the war if she had had the right kind of political leader, Tate argues. But Davis, whose rise to leadership was generally unearned (p. 79), wasn't it.

Beyond Davis the man, Tate also has a deep grasp of the Southern culture and the larger historical and cultural issues that were clashing in the War Between the States. In keeping with his Southern Agrarianism, Tate paints the South as the last outpost of European culture in the Americas, standing against -- and ultimately overwhelmed by -- the surging might of restless, expansionist, wealth-seeking "Americanism," embodied in the Yankee Northeast. Tate's grasp of Southern regionalism lets him place an emphasis on the tensions between Upper and Lower South that, for me, shone a light on the instability of the Confederate government that I haven't seen as emphasized elsewhere.

Tate's perspective and narrative form may not be in keeping with more modern styles of biography. But this book is nevertheless an excellent and insightful read, and I recommend it to any student of the men caught up in, as well as the issues behind, America's bloodiest conflict.

Eminently readable biography
This book is no act of idolatry, despite the author's reputation as a Southern conservative and Agrarian.Tate believes Davis was a great man, but he points out his flaws as well, his diffidence in acting sooner thatmight have won the South the War, his pride, his sometime aloofness,histendency to remain loyal to generals (Braxton Bragg foremost among them)whose incompetence was all too apparent to others, and his refusal toappoint the right men for the right job.

This is an absorbing read thatputs one in mind of Shelby Foote's celebrated War trilogy, although Tate'swas written first.It has the same novelistic quality and drive and thesame quickly drawn but utterly convincing characterizations.The bookalternates between presentations of certain monumental battles andportraits of life on the "homefront."The latter is actuallymore fascinating than the former.We learn in vivid detail of the strengthand loyalty and perseverance of the Southern people. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

From New to Old Critic: Tate's Twisted Path of Conversion
Huff's book is a well-written and honest overview of the Catholic Revival through the conversion narrative of protagonist poet Allen Tate.Huff's thesis is that Tate's "attraction to the values of the Catholic Revival contributed to his acceptance of the Catholic religion as well as, ironically, to this eventual sense of alienation from the church"(5).

Caught up in the excitement of the late 19th and early 20th century Catholic revivalism in England - embodied by such luminary converts as John Henry Newman, Christopher Dawson, Ronald Knox, and G.K. Chesterton - Tate promoted a more distinctly religious solution to the problems in American society than that found in the New Agrarians of Vanderbilt.Through, among other influences, a relationship with Catholic writer Jacques Maritain, Tate was exposed to a Catholicism that married Aristotle with Aquinas in a New-Thomistic vision of reality.In this Tate created an idealistic vision with which to both approach literature in a consistent, concrete way - a la the incarnation - and also to see all of life in an integrated kind of medievalism.

As Huff points out, however, Tate's idealism as played out through his eventual conversion to Catholicism and career thereafter were met with three difficult and painful realities: 1) the Catholic Church in America - exemplified in Vatican II reforms - was headed in the very opposite direction of the Catholic Revivalism that had attracted Tate into the fold; 2) the seeming lack of receptiveness and responsiveness among the American Catholic intellectual establishment to recognizing him as a kind of "Catholic Matthew Arnold"; and 3) the demons of Tate's own personal life - including marriage, divorce, and remarriage several times over - which would, in a tragic twist, cut this convert off from the very sacramental life into which he had been baptized.

In concluding his study on the Catholic Revival and its best known American convert, Huff quotes from Tate's own reflections on his life as poet and pilgrim: "As I look back up on my own verse, written over more than twenty-five years, I see plainly that its main theme is man suffering from unbelief; and I cannot for a moment suppose that this man is some other than myself."This side of glory perhaps those who follow the divine are bound to suffer as fugitives, those for whom their lives, save their poetry and occassional studies, virtually vanish without a trace. And thus, like the Church herself, the protagonist of this story is at once the antagonist. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Focusing on the vexed friendship between Hart Crane and Allen Tate, this book examines twentieth-century American poetry's progress toward institutional sanction and professional organization, a process in which sexual identities, poetic traditions, and literary occupations were in question and at stake. Langdon Hammer combines biography and formalist analysis to argue that American modernism was a Janus-faced phenomenon, at once emancipatory and elitist, which simultaneously attacked traditional cultural authority and reconstructed it in new forms.Hammer shows how Crane and Tate, working in relation to each other and to T. S. Eliot, created for themselves the competing roles of "genius" and "poet-critic." Crane embraced the self-authorizing powers of the individual talent at the cost of standing outside the emerging consensus of high modernist literary culture, an aesthetic isolation which converged with his social isolation as a gay man. Tate, turning against Crane, linked the modernist defense of tradition to an embattled heterosexual masculinity, while he adapted Eliot's stance to a career sustained by criticism and teaching. Ending his book with a discussion of Robert Lowell's career, Hammer maintains that Lowell's "confessional" poetry recapitulates the conflict enacted by Crane and Tate. ... Read more

Product Description

This is a remarkable collection of letters covering nearly four decades of correspondence between two of the South's foremost literary figures.

Product Description
An introduction to the Southern Critics for those who donot know them. Dr. Cowan has concentrated on the three founders of theschool--Ransom, Tate, and Davidson--because it was in their minds andimagination that the movement took form. ... Read more