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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
With Selected Poems, 1963, Ransom's canon of “authorized” poems stands at fifty-three. Comparison of this latest collection with his 1945 and 1955 collections reveals minor and major changes of the 1945 and 1955 collections, particularly in his lesser-known poems, and inclusion of revised versions of earlier poems. Most changes show Ransom simplifying diction, smoothing meter, or removing obscurities. Minor changes (word and punctuation changes) occur in eight poems. Major changes (revisions of whole lines, addition or deletion of material longer than one line, and complete revision) occur in fourteen poems (“Agitato ma non troppo,” “First Travels of Max,” “Armageddon,” “Prometheus in Straits,” “Eclogue,” “Hilda,” “What Ducks Require,” “Master's in the Garden Again,” and others). “Old Man Pondered,” reprinted without change from the Saturday Review of Literature, is considered a major change since it did not appear in the 1945 or 1955 collections.
1 Throughout changes have been italicized.
2 Between Poems and Essays, 1955, and Selected Poems, 1963, Ransom's only easy opportunity for further revision was his recording for the Yale Series of Recorded Poets. Only two of the eighteen poems he read were among those he had revised: “Our Two Worthies” and “What Ducks Require,” and in both cases he recorded the revised versions. The other poems were not changed. His comments prefaced to “What Ducks Require” state the reasons for his fondness for this particular poem: “I might say that this little poem has a sentimental value for me because it was read in a foreign land by someone who returned to America and presently offered me a job which I accepted and which caused me to change my life.”
3 W. D. Snodgrass, “‘Master's in the Garden Again’,” in Anthony Ostroff, ed., The Contemporary Poet as Artist and Critic (Boston, 1964), pp. 117–118, notes Ransom's “new diction,” and adds “The only thing in the poem reminiscent of the earlier vocabulary is the Latinism of ‘conjugate lovers,‘ and I'm not sure but what it is a mistake.”
4 “The Search for Perfection,” Poetry, Lxvii (1946), 213–214.
