ABSTRACT
Allen Tate entered Vanderbilt in 1918 from "a rural-smalltown society that had only a superficial Victorian veneer pasted over what was still an eighteenth-century way of living". Tate wrote his poem in terza rima, hard going in English. The paucity of English rhymes leaves it clumsy and monotonous in all but the hands of a master. Tate's great men in modern letters were T. S. Eliot and John Crowe Ransom, and when he lay dying, their photographs hung on the wall of his bedroom. "My two masters", he said. In this context he talked about early days, resuming his long career and his long and equivocal friendship with Richard Blackmur. Richard stood to Allen like acolyte to master, the way Delmore Schwartz stood to Richard. Allen was too old for military service, but should Richard be drafted he might be sent for training to one of the southern camps, Forrest or Oglethorpe.
