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John Crowe Ransom

By: Katelyn White and Sarah Pagel

Modernism

Modernism is the ideas and methods which are very different from those used in the past.

John Crowe Ransom was part of the Fugitive Group and the Fugitive Group had a special interest in modernist poetry.

Background Information

Bells For John Whiteside’s Daughter

Citations

Bradford, M.E.. "On "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter"."http://www.english.illinois.edu/. Modern

American Poetry , 1968. Web. 24 Apr. 2015. <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ransom/bells.htm>.

Ferguson, Suzanne . "John Crowe Ransom, 1888-1974." http://docsouth.unc.edu. University of North

Carolina Press , 1989. Web. 24 Apr. 2015. <http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/ransom/bio.html>.

"John Crowe Ransom." http://www.poetryfoundation.org. Poetry Magazine , n.d. Web. 24 Apr.

2015.

Quinlan, Kieran. "John Crowe Ransom's Life and Career."http://www.english.illinois.edu. American

Council of Learned Societies, 1999. Web. 24 Apr. 2015.

  • Ransom was raised in a strongly religious house
  • He went to the University of Nashville at the age of 15.
  • He was a highly respected educator, scholar, and literary critic
  • Became one of the leading poets of his generation.

April Treason

We Think that he was talking about how beautiful the woman he loves is. He was made uncontrollable by her perfection and took advantage of her love until there was nothing left but her beauty, as he portrays in this stanza "Like a lovely shattered shell"

So he took her as anointed

In the part he had appointed,

She was lips for smiling faintly,

Eyes to look and level quaintly,

Length of limb and splendors of the bust

Which he honored as he must.

Queen of women playing model,

Pure of brow but brain not idle,

Sitting in her silence meetly,

Let her adjective be stately;

So he thought his art would manage right

In the honest Northern light.

But he fashioned it too coldly,

April broke-and-entered boldly,

Thinking how to suit the season’s

Odor, savor, heats and treasons:

Painter! do not stoop and play the host

Lest the man come uppermost.

Yet he knew that he was altered

When the perfect woman faltered,

Languish in her softly speaking,

Anguish, even, in her looking:

All the art had fled his fingertips

So he bent and kissed her lips.

He and Venus took their pleasure,

Then he turned upon his treasure,

Took and trampled it with loathing,

Flung it over cliffs to nothing;

Glittering in the sunlight while it fell

Like a lovely shattered shell.

Strict the silence that came onward

As they trod the foothill downward,

One more mocking noon of April,

Mischief always is in April;

Still she touched his fingers cold as ice

And recited, “It was nice.”

There was such speed in her little body,

And such lightness in her footfall,

It is no wonder her brown study Astonishes us all

Her wars were bruited in our high window.

We looked among orchard trees and beyond

Where she took arms against her shadow,

Or harried unto the pond

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud

Dripping their snow on the green grass,

Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,

Who cried in goose, Alas,

For the tireless heart within the little

Lady with rod that made them rise

From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle

Goose-fashion under the skies!

But now go the bells, and we are ready,

In one house we are sternly stopped

To say we are vexed at her brown study,

Lying so primly propped.

Critical Analysis

April

Critical Analysis

In M. E. Bradfords analysis, he explains that Bells For John Whiteside’s Daughter is a poem about the death of a very young girl. Her death shocks her neighbors, and they are extremely “vexed” that a child who was only recently so full of life is now a silent, “primly propped” corpse. The recollections of the child's vivacity and grace make the stillness and abstracted appearance of her dead body disturbing. This poem is a miniature but highly traditional elegy, Ransoms writing forces people to face the fragility of life and the injustices that death sometimes carries out.

SAVOR of love is thick on the April air,

The blunted boughs dispose their lacy bloom,

And many sorry steeds dismissed to pasture

Toss their old forelocks, flourish heavy heels.

Where is there any unpersuaded poet

So angry still against the wrongs of winter

Which caused the dainty earth to droop and die,

So vengeant for his vine and summer song,

As to decline the good releasing thaw?

Poets have temperature and follow seasons,

And covenants go out at equinox.

The champions! For Heaven, riding high

Above the icy death, considered truly;

'My agate icy work, I thought it fair;

Yet I have lacked that pretty lift of praise

That mounted once from these emaciate minstrels.

They will not sing, and duty drops away

And I must turn and make a soft amend!'

At once he showered April down, until

The bleak twigs bloom again; and soon, I swear,

He shall receive his praise.

April is the month to fall in love because nature is also starting to bloom with beauty.

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