Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

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

Book Description
An introduction to the Southern Critics for those who do not know them. Dr. Cowan has concentrated on the three founders of the school--Ransom, Tate, and Davidson--because it was in their minds and imagination that the movement took form. ... 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

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Mississippi Quarterly, published by Mississippi State University on December 22, 1998. The length of the article is 2399 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Unregenerate South: The Agrarian Thought of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson.(Review)
Author: John Grammer
Publication: The Mississippi Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 1998
Publisher: Mississippi State University
Volume: 52Issue: 1Page: 143

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Mississippi Quarterly, published by Mississippi State University on March 22, 2001. The length of the article is 1200 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Allen Tate: Orphan of the South. (Book Reviews).(Review)
Author: John M. Grammar
Publication: The Mississippi Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2001
Publisher: Mississippi State University
Volume: 54Issue: 2Page: 273(4)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Mississippi Quarterly, published by Mississippi State University on March 22, 2000. The length of the article is 1507 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate: Collected Letters, 1933-1976.(Review) (book review)
Author: Christopher Metress
Publication: The Mississippi Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2000
Publisher: Mississippi State University
Volume: 53Issue: 2Page: 359

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on September 1, 2001. The length of the article is 5766 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The violence of Allen Tate.(writer)
Author: David Yezzi
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2001
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 20Issue: 1Page: 66

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