Allen Tate was born in Winchester, Clarke County, Kentucky, on November 19,
1899. His schooling was desultory, with a year at a school in Nashville, three
years at one in Louisville, a half year each at two public high schools, a
final year at a preparatory school in Washington, D.C. He entered Vanderbilt
University in 1919. His readings in philosophy and literature were
sufficiently varied to impress John Crowe Ransom, from whom he took two
courses and the sense of a way of life. Tate, and later his roommate Robert
Penn Warren, were the two undergraduates favored by an invitation to join an
adult group who met to discuss poetry and other subjects in Nashville. They
called themselves the Fugitives and published a magazine, The Fugitive,
to which Tate contributed a number of poems. One of these brought him a letter
from Hart Crane, who thought he detected in it the influence of Eliot. A long
and momentous friendship then began.
Because of a skirmish with tuberculosis, Tate had to take his
degree a year later, in 1923. He then did some school teaching in West
Virginia, but moved on to New York in the hope of a writing career. To make
ends meet he worked on a semi-pornographic magazine called Telling Tales.
He had meanwhile married Caroline Gordon, also a writer, and they moved to a
large house in Patterson, New York, in late 1925 to pursue their writing
careers. Hart Crane was invited to stay with them and remained for several
months, but the quarrel over his housekeeping chores --- which he could not
abide --- led to his departure.
The Tates moved back to live in Greenwich Village after a year
in Patterson. Allen Tate became a well-known and highly respected figure in
the literary world. He edited the Sewanee Review from 1944 to 1946. In
1950 he became a Roman Catholic. From 1951 until his retirement in 1968 he was
a professor of English at the University of Minnesota.
__________
Ellmann, Richard and Robert O'Clair. Modern Poems: An
Introduction to Poetry.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1973, pp.
242-243.
