Born in Winchester, Kentucky, and educated at Vanderbilt University, Allen Tate was an original member of the Fugitives, and a founding editor of the magazine named for them. The group, which included Vanderbilt alumni John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, and Merrill Moore, was interested in maintaining and practicing formal poetic techniques; they championed traditional Southern agrarian values and preached resistance against urbanism and industrialization. Mr. Pope and Other Poems, Allen Tate’s first book of poetry, was published in 1928; other works by Tate include: The Mediterranean and Other Poems (1936), The Winter Sea (1944), Two Conceits for the Eye to Sing, If Possible (1950), and Collected Poems (1970). Tate was a professor of English at the University of Minnesota from 1951 until his retirement. He died in 1979.