SOURCE: Folks, Jeffrey J.. “‘The Archeologist of Memory’: Autobiographical Recollection in Tate's ‘Maimed Man’ Trilogy.” The Southern Literary Journal 27, no. 1 (fall 1994): 51-60.

In the following essay, Folks considers the unifying stylistic and thematic elements of the “Maimed Man” trilogy, focusing on the autobiographical aspects of the poems.

The “Maimed Man” trilogy, including “The Maimed Man,” “The Swimmers,” and “The Buried Lake” (1952-53), comprises a terza rima cycle of poems linked not only by form but by connected imagery of mutilation, musical endeavor, baptism, communion of blood and body, and divine light mirrored in nature. The poems are also Tate's poetic autobiography, beginning in a Southern small town (Winchester, Kentucky) and developing from his childhood terror at the disturbing anarchy in nature toward his adult reaction to this perception of loss. This defensive reaction took the form of rational systems, technical virtuosity, formalism—those gestures of human control that...