"John Crowe Ransom distinguished himself as one of the South's foremost poets and literary critics of the twentieth century, cultivating a poetic style that presented an agrarian philosophy of rural life. In the process, he helped formulate a new method of literary analysis, the New Criticism, which advocated close reading of texts with attention to their form and internal meaning. His students included such prominent literary figures as Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and E.L. Doctorow. Ransom's poetry, which he revised extensively throughout his lifetime, offers a concise representation of his ideas about art, life, and the vocation of poets"--