Tate, (John Orley) Allen (1899–1979)

US man of letters. He is best remembered for measured, classical poems like his well-known ‘Ode to the Confederate Dead’. The winner of the Bollingen poetry prize in 1956, he was also a prominent New Critic, an essayist, and the teacher of John Berryman and Theodore Roethke, among many others.

Tate was born in Winchester, Kentucky. As a student at Vanderbilt University he joined the Fugitive group of southern writers; he later became the pre-eminent representative of the Southern Agrarian school. He was married (1924–59) to the novelist Caroline Gordon.