SOURCE: Leary, Lewis. “The Forlorn Hope of Sidney Lanier.” In Southern Excursions: Essays on Mark Twain and Others, pp. 131-41. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1971.

In the following essay, Leary offers a brief survey of critical opinion about Lanier's poetry and prose.

Some years ago three prominent Southern poets set upon Sidney Lanier with vehemence which might be supposed to have silenced him and his disciples forever. “His poetry,” said Allen Tate, “has little to say to this century either in substance or technique.” Lanier's was a “commonplace and confused mind,” intellectually and morally insincere, irresponsible, and incapable of precise expression. Robert Penn Warren called him “The Blind Poet,” so full of self and egocentric theory that his aesthetic perception was atrophied. Sentimental, sensual, and effeminate, his poetry, said Mr. Warren, was at best absurd. Finally, John Crowe Ransom, spokesman for a new Southern agrarianism, disowned Lanier as...