The modern poet more often than his predecessors has had to be a critic too, to define his presuppositions, since there were few that he could easily inherit. He has had to invent a dialect for himself, or pick out an eclectic one from the stores of the past, for there was none that was settled and generally available. One way of approaching Ransom's poetry would be through his criticism. Another would be through details of language and style. If I begin by picking about in these areas apparently at random, rather than speaking about the South, the Fugitives, and the New Criticism—the large public facts that have conditioned Ransom's career—the above must be my excuse.

The surface feature that first catches the attention in Ransom's writing is a prevailing trickiness of expression, by which expectation is mildly defeated, the mind is made to boggle a...