SOURCE: "Mississippian Is Rated Best Poet of Entire South," in The Nashville Tennessean, May 11, 1924.

In the following essay, Ransom—critical of Percy in other contexts—praises Enzio's Kingdom.

The third volume of poems [Enzio's Kingdom] to be issued by Mr. Percy, who lives at Greenville, Mississippi, will reinforce the opinion that here is the foremost of the Southern poets of this time. The honor was already widely conceded him by the reading public and the poets themselves.

And yet how to define him? No undertaking tries the critic so much as fixing the rare and fugitive flavor of certain poetry.

Of course there are some strains that have a quality much more obvious than that of others; these represent the poets that are willing to harp on one string only, that depend on certain tricks and dodges for their quick effects, that are in reality more violent and...