RANSOM, JOHN CROWE, 1888-1974 INTRODUCTION This article review about John Crowe Ransom introduces some of his achievements. John Crowe Ransom demonstrated an accomplishment that set him apart from the population during his time period. Crowe's achievements were observable and he was a significant contributor to the new criticismmovement. In addition, he could be considered as one of the authors who bridged modernism and post realism. Crowe's works received admiration, on the contrary critics disagree especially the poem “Bells for John Whiteside Daughter.”
BIOGRAPHY
John Crowe Ransom was born on April 30, 1888; in Pulaski Tennessee. He was the third of four children of Ella Ransom and John James Ransom, a Methodist minister. Looking at Ransom's educational background, he was home-schooled until age ten and was admitted to Vanderbilt University at the age of 15. Ransom took a two-year hiatus to teach grammar school and high school. He then returned to Vanderbilt for the remaining two years graduating first in his class in 1909. However, he stopped for a year, and then attended at Oxford University's Christ Church College as a Rhodes Scholar from 1910 to 1913.
After graduating from Oxford, Ransom taught Latin for a year at the prestigious Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, before joining the English department at Vanderbilt in 1914. When the United States joined the First World War in 1917, Ransom was posted to France to serve as a US Army artillery officer. Ransom was a founding member of the Fugitives. Ransom met his wife, Robb Reavill, while she was visiting Nashville from Wellesley College. They married on December 22, 1920. The couple raised three children: Helen, David Reavill and John James. Ransom retired from Kenyon College in 1959 but continued to take teaching jobs, including positions at Colorado State Teachers College and George Peabody College for Teachers. Towards the end of his life, Ransom suffered from various infirmities. It gradually led him into long periods of seclusion. On July 3, 1974 he died in his sleep at his home on the Kenyon campus (Ransom, p1). Ransom widowed his wife of more than fifty four years.
OVERVIEW and ACHIEVEMENTS
In his career, he became well known and gained reputation from two of his works,
“Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927). He wrote and published approximately 160 poems between 1916 and, 1927. In 1930, Ransom published a book of essays, God without Thunder: an Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy and in 1931 he won a Guggenheim Fellowship on the strength of his poetry. After seven years, Ransom published a collection of 15 essays in 1938, The World's Body, which would become one of the most important landmarks of modern criticism. A year later Ransom founded the Kenyon Review; he would serve as its editor until 1959” (Ransom, p.2).
In 1941 Ransom “published The New Criticism, in which he proposed a close reading of the text and argued that a poem should be evaluated based on a study of its 'structure' and 'texture', rather than its content. In fact, Ransom stated, structure and texture within a poem are often working in opposition, and it is this friction that generates unanticipated imagery” (Ransom, p.2).
Ransom published his “first Selected Poems (1945), which includes only five poems written after 1927. The expanded edition of Selected Poems, published in 1963, contains some new stanzas and many revised lines, but no new poems. He also edited Topics for Freshman Writing (1935) and A College Primer of Writing (1943) and published Poetics (1942), a collection of essays” (Ransom, p.2).
He was “awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry and the Russell Loines Prize for Poetry in 1951 and was an Academy of American Poets fellow in 1962. He won the National Book Award for his Selected Poems in 1964 and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1967. The following year the American Academy of Arts and Sciences presented him with its Emerson-Thoreau Medal. In 1973 he received the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal and a plot in the Chalmers Library at Kenyon College where his ashes are buried” (Ransom, p. 3).
REVIEW of a SIGLE WORK
One of his works that earned him such “honorary” burial is “Bells for John Whitesides’ Daughter” in which the work was perceived as poem of “grief.” Perhaps the most obvious line in the poem is, “Who cried in goose, Alas” which portray an overwhelming grief.
"Bells for John Whitesides' Daughter,"
There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.
Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond
The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,
For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!
But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.
Coinciding with line twelve are lines nineteen and twenty. The little girl just like every human beings are destine to face her final battle, “To say we are vexed at her brown study, Lying so primly propped,” by virtue, she was going back to earth and turn to dust.
CRITICS EVALUATION of: Grief in “Bells for John Whiteside Daughter”
John Crowe Ransom’s “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” poem has encounter criticism by evaluators. Several critics studied the poem implications that are being portrayed to the readers. The poem is viewed as one complicated work and has not established its own place of recognition. For example, Douglas Fowler writes that “commentators seem to have had difficulty describing in the nature of the pact’s achievement” (p.1). Fowler is clearly stating that Ransom has not been able to obtain such recognition which he perhaps expected to achieve from this poem. Other critics have also commented some negatives in this work.
In Robert Peen Warren (98) evaluation, he viewed the work as a poem of grief or sad feelings. Warren writes that the “Simple grief is not the content of the primary statement” (p.8), in which he implies that one, may ignore any sign of grief of psychological discomfort when reading this poem. Grief is not what the poem is about and therefore, if a reader does not detach such feelings and emotion when reading, an unfortunate thing would happen, misunderstanding the message its trying to convey. Fowler though completely disagrees with Warren. Fowler writes, “It is precisely a statement of grief that readers have received the poem for seventy years” (1) in which Fowler clearly suggest that there is no escaping on the meaning of the poem. Ransom created a poem of grief that supposedly has been haunting poem readers in the last seventy years, in which, he may not even have been aware of such portrayal. Fowler clearly stated that one may not read the poem with a mere feeling of sadness, but with grief. Evidently, the two evaluators have opposing view on Ransom’s “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter.”
Vivienne Koh though described the work as “delicately turned elegy, suffused with affectionate humor” (Koch, V., p.11). One may view this as thoughtful and caring evaluation because the message of the poem has not been drastically delivered as if the Ransom was delivering a poem of grief in more subtle manner. However, Koh indicated that Ransom was “intruding into the child’s own universe of geese and grass” (p.11) which suggests that Ransom was not only heartless but also possessive. In addition, Kohs’ portrayal appears to be an illustration of one who experienced grief and was able to accept that by virtue, grief is life. Therefore human should just deal when grievous situation arises. However, Fowler suggests that Kohs “statement is true, but superficial” (Fowler, 1). In opposition, Fowler implies that Kohs has not fully understood the poems’ meaning and perhaps has ignored its true message.
Works Cited
Fowler, Douglas. "Ransom's Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter." Explicator 52.2 (1994): 99.
Koch, Vivienne. "The Achievement of John Crowe Ransom." The Sewanee Review 58.2 (1950): 227-61.
Poetry Database. EBSCO. Web. 9 Apr.2010.
Ransom, John Crowe, 1888-1974.
Ransom, John Crowe, (1888–1974). "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter." Columbia Granger's Poetry Database (n.d.): Columbia Granger's
Warren, Robert Penn. “John Crowe Ransom: A Study in Irony.” Virginia quarterly Review II (1935): 8.
RANSOM, JOHN CROWE, 1888-1974
INTRODUCTION
This article review about John Crowe Ransom introduces some of his achievements. John Crowe Ransom demonstrated an accomplishment that set him apart from the population during his time period. Crowe's achievements were observable and he was a significant contributor to the new criticismmovement. In addition, he could be considered as one of the authors who bridged modernism and post realism. Crowe's works received admiration, on the contrary critics disagree especially the poem “Bells for John Whiteside Daughter.”
BIOGRAPHY
John Crowe Ransom was born on April 30, 1888; in Pulaski Tennessee. He was the third of four children of Ella Ransom and John James Ransom, a Methodist minister. Looking at Ransom's educational background, he was home-schooled until age ten and was admitted to Vanderbilt University at the age of 15. Ransom took a two-year hiatus to teach grammar school and high school. He then returned to Vanderbilt for the remaining two years graduating first in his class in 1909. However, he stopped for a year, and then attended at Oxford University's Christ Church College as a Rhodes Scholar from 1910 to 1913.
After graduating from Oxford, Ransom taught Latin for a year at the prestigious Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, before joining the English department at Vanderbilt in 1914. When the United States joined the First World War in 1917, Ransom was posted to France to serve as a US Army artillery officer. Ransom was a founding member of the Fugitives. Ransom met his wife, Robb Reavill, while she was visiting Nashville from Wellesley College. They married on December 22, 1920. The couple raised three children: Helen, David Reavill and John James. Ransom retired from Kenyon College in 1959 but continued to take teaching jobs, including positions at Colorado State Teachers College and George Peabody College for Teachers. Towards the end of his life, Ransom suffered from various infirmities. It gradually led him into long periods of seclusion. On July 3, 1974 he died in his sleep at his home on the Kenyon campus (Ransom, p1). Ransom widowed his wife of more than fifty four years.
OVERVIEW and ACHIEVEMENTS
In his career, he became well known and gained reputation from two of his works,
“Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927). He wrote and published approximately 160 poems between 1916 and, 1927. In 1930, Ransom published a book of essays, God without Thunder: an Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy and in 1931 he won a Guggenheim Fellowship on the strength of his poetry. After seven years, Ransom published a collection of 15 essays in 1938, The World's Body, which would become one of the most important landmarks of modern criticism. A year later Ransom founded the Kenyon Review; he would serve as its editor until 1959” (Ransom, p.2).
In 1941 Ransom “published The New Criticism, in which he proposed a close reading of the text and argued that a poem should be evaluated based on a study of its 'structure' and 'texture', rather than its content. In fact, Ransom stated, structure and texture within a poem are often working in opposition, and it is this friction that generates unanticipated imagery” (Ransom, p.2).
Ransom published his “first Selected Poems (1945), which includes only five poems written after 1927. The expanded edition of Selected Poems, published in 1963, contains some new stanzas and many revised lines, but no new poems. He also edited Topics for Freshman Writing (1935) and A College Primer of Writing (1943) and published Poetics (1942), a collection of essays” (Ransom, p.2).
He was “awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry and the Russell Loines Prize for Poetry in 1951 and was an Academy of American Poets fellow in 1962. He won the National Book Award for his Selected Poems in 1964 and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1967. The following year the American Academy of Arts and Sciences presented him with its Emerson-Thoreau Medal. In 1973 he received the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal and a plot in the Chalmers Library at Kenyon College where his ashes are buried” (Ransom, p. 3).
REVIEW of a SIGLE WORK
One of his works that earned him such “honorary” burial is “Bells for John Whitesides’ Daughter” in which the work was perceived as poem of “grief.” Perhaps the most obvious line in the poem is, “Who cried in goose, Alas” which portray an overwhelming grief.
"Bells for John Whitesides' Daughter,"
There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.
Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond
The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,
For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!
But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.
Coinciding with line twelve are lines nineteen and twenty. The little girl just like every human beings are destine to face her final battle, “To say we are vexed at her brown study, Lying so primly propped,” by virtue, she was going back to earth and turn to dust.
CRITICS EVALUATION of: Grief in “Bells for John Whiteside Daughter”
John Crowe Ransom’s “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” poem has encounter criticism by evaluators. Several critics studied the poem implications that are being portrayed to the readers. The poem is viewed as one complicated work and has not established its own place of recognition. For example, Douglas Fowler writes that “commentators seem to have had difficulty describing in the nature of the pact’s achievement” (p.1). Fowler is clearly stating that Ransom has not been able to obtain such recognition which he perhaps expected to achieve from this poem. Other critics have also commented some negatives in this work.
In Robert Peen Warren (98) evaluation, he viewed the work as a poem of grief or sad feelings. Warren writes that the “Simple grief is not the content of the primary statement” (p.8), in which he implies that one, may ignore any sign of grief of psychological discomfort when reading this poem. Grief is not what the poem is about and therefore, if a reader does not detach such feelings and emotion when reading, an unfortunate thing would happen, misunderstanding the message its trying to convey. Fowler though completely disagrees with Warren. Fowler writes, “It is precisely a statement of grief that readers have received the poem for seventy years” (1) in which Fowler clearly suggest that there is no escaping on the meaning of the poem. Ransom created a poem of grief that supposedly has been haunting poem readers in the last seventy years, in which, he may not even have been aware of such portrayal. Fowler clearly stated that one may not read the poem with a mere feeling of sadness, but with grief. Evidently, the two evaluators have opposing view on Ransom’s “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter.”
Vivienne Koh though described the work as “delicately turned elegy, suffused with affectionate humor” (Koch, V., p.11). One may view this as thoughtful and caring evaluation because the message of the poem has not been drastically delivered as if the Ransom was delivering a poem of grief in more subtle manner. However, Koh indicated that Ransom was “intruding into the child’s own universe of geese and grass” (p.11) which suggests that Ransom was not only heartless but also possessive. In addition, Kohs’ portrayal appears to be an illustration of one who experienced grief and was able to accept that by virtue, grief is life. Therefore human should just deal when grievous situation arises. However, Fowler suggests that Kohs “statement is true, but superficial” (Fowler, 1). In opposition, Fowler implies that Kohs has not fully understood the poems’ meaning and perhaps has ignored its true message.
Works Cited
Fowler, Douglas. "Ransom's Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter." Explicator 52.2 (1994): 99.
Koch, Vivienne. "The Achievement of John Crowe Ransom." The Sewanee Review 58.2 (1950): 227-61.
Poetry Database. EBSCO. Web. 9 Apr.2010.
Ransom, John Crowe, 1888-1974.
Ransom, John Crowe, (1888–1974). "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter." Columbia Granger's Poetry Database (n.d.): Columbia Granger's
Warren, Robert Penn. “John Crowe Ransom: A Study in Irony.” Virginia quarterly Review II (1935): 8.