In the thirties (and it did not end with the thirties) I greatly admired Tate for the sonorous and noble effects in much of his poetry, which I wanted to make a part of my own. Moreover, certain rhythms or, perhaps more accurately, turns of phrase seemed to me so finely and inevitably poetic that all that could be done was to try to echo them…. (p. 234)

The following is what I started by saying when I [reviewed Tate's Poems 1920–1945: A Selection (published in England) in 1948] (I had just quoted the end of Ransom's "Survey of Literature"—"God have mercy on the sinner / Who must write with … Only consonants and vowels"):

We should be obtuse indeed if we despised mere consonants and vowels. The preeminent virtue of Allen Tate's poetry seems to me to be precisely the consistent integrity of its language. I can think of no other...