SOURCE: Johnson, Carol. “The Heroism of the Rational: The Poetry of Allen Tate.” Renascence 17, no. 2 (winter 1964): 89-96.

In the following essay, Johnson emphasizes the role of reason in Tate's poetry.

The contemporary poet is a man whom our sophisticated awareness of extramental and preconscious conditions of existence causes us to credit with having even more to withstand from these quarters than he is likely to maintain in the way of technical resources with which to organize his response. If we apprehend one note common to the poems of our contemporaries, an extraordinary if diversely distributed weight incumbent upon their makers, it is freedom. For our traditions inform us cumulatively of nothing more patent than that the great modes have achieved their maturest expressions, that the most strident rebellion must follow established paths, but that where much is disponible little is apt for possession in so eclectic a time...