Today’s Poem: Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter

John Crowe Ransom’s poetic self-effacement

Viggo Johansen, The Dead Child, 1881 (Wikimedia Commons)

Today’s Poem commemorates the birthday of its author, the Fugitive poet and literary critic John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974). With “Janet Waking” and “Blue Girls,” the 1924 “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,” which appeared in a collection of the same year, Chills and Fever, numbers among Ransom’s …