Allen Tate, one of the giants of American arts and letters in the 20th century, came from Winchester. A poet, essayist, and social commentator, he helped found the Southern Agrarian movement, the New Criticism, and The Fugitive literary magazine. Along the way, he established a reputation as a bon vivant, racist, and womanizer.
John Orley Allen Tate (1899−1979) was born in Winchester and resided on Lexington Avenue for the first few years of his life. His father, who had poor business instincts, subjected the family to frequent moves. As a teenager, Allen studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before enrolling in Vanderbilt University. There, he became the first undergraduate to be invited to join an élite poetry group led by John Crowe Ransom.
Tate graduated Vanderbilt magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1922. He and Ransom founded and edited a poetry magazine, The Fugitive, that focused on experiences of the rural south and helped mark the beginning of modern Southern literature. Tate also brought into their group Robert Penn Warren, who went on to become one of Kentucky’s most beloved authors.
In 1924, Tate moved to New York City, where he began publishing poetry and literary criticism in periodicals. On a visit to Kentucky, he met the writer Caroline Gordon. They lived together in Greenwich Village before marrying and moving to Patterson, New Jersey.
Tate’s first published book of poetry includes his most famous poem, “Ode to the Confederate Dead” (1928). Shortly after that, he published biographies of Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.
The Tates spent several years abroad (1928−1930), where they met the European literati in London and Paris, and he established a long-lasting friendship with the poet T. S. Eliot. The year of their return, the Agrarians published I’ll Take My Stand, The South and the Agrarian Tradition by Twelve Southerners. Tate’s essay, “Remarks on the Southern Religion,” like much of Tate’s writing, was a tough read for me. A quote in his introduction speaks to his thoughts on Southern religion: “One will have to think for oneself, a responsibility intolerable to the religious mind.”
The next four decades found Tate deeply immersed in the American literary scene. He held numerous University teaching positions—Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Minnesota, North Carolina, Sewanee—and mentored many young poets, including John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Delmore Schwartz. Along the way he collected numerous awards: a Guggenheim fellowship, Fulbright lecturer, membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and American Academy of Arts and Letters, Poet Laureate, Bollingen Prize for Poetry, National Medal for Literature, and others.
Tate’s 1960 publication, Poems, included “The Swimmers” and “The Buried Lake,” which drew high praise from T. S. Eliot.
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His private life was unsettled. He divorced Gordon, remarried her, then divorced again in 1959. Soon after, Tate married the poet Isabella Gardner. His numerous affairs rocked their union, too. After a dalliance with one of his graduate students, Helen Heinz, Gardner divorced him and Tate married Heinz.
Part of Tate’s early Southern conservatism included an inherited racism. While he spoke “in favor of Negro rights,” he also stated, “I think the Negro race is an inferior race.” At one time he refused to meet with the poet Langston Hughes. After converting to Catholicism in 1960, Tate did revise his racial views. “I wasn’t born with virtue in these matters; I have had to acquire it.” He supported the Montgomery bus boycott, criticized suppression of the black vote, spoke alongside Dr. Martin Luther King at a civil rights event, and wrote the forward for a book by the African American poet, M. B. Tolson.
By the 1970s Tate, a habitual smoker, had to withdraw from public life due to his worsening emphysema. He died in Vanderbilt Hospital on February 9, 1979, and was buried at Sewanee. The Winchester Sun ran a glowing obituary. Over the years the Sun had many articles about Tate, never failing to mention that he was a Winchester native. A Kentucky Historical Marker for Tate stands on Lexington Avenue in front of Legacy Grove Park.
Thanks to Jennings Mace for helpful conversations with me about Tate.
