Marion Montgomery (poet)

Marion Montgomery (1925-2011). Courtesy The Imaginative Conservative.

Marion Hoyt Montgomery (April 16, 1925 - November 22, 2011) was an American poet, novelist, literary critic, and academic..

Life

Montgomery was born in Thomaston, Georgia. He served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946. He earned a A.B. in 1950 and an M.A. in 1953 from the University of Georgia, and did postgraduate work in creative writing at the University of Iowa (1956–58).

He married Dorothy Carlisle in 1951. They have 5 children.

For more than 30 years he was a professor of English at the University of Georgia.

Montgomery in later life. Courtesy New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Although he published extensively as a poet and novelist, it is likely that he will be remembered best as a literary and social critic.

Born the same year as Flannery O'Connor, Montgomery was her friend and has become perhaps her most insightful interpreter. He often pointed out that he, like O'Connor, was a "Hillbilly Thomist," and it is that Catholic worldview that permeates his own work and allowed him particular insights into both O'Connor and another subject of his criticism, Walker Percy.

Several of Montgomery's dozen or so published short stories have been included in best-of anthologies. "I Got a Gal" and "The Decline and Fall of Officer Fergerson" appeared in Southern Writing in the Sixties, 1966, and The Best American Short Stories, 1971, respectively. His books of poetry include Dry Lightning (1960), Stones from the Rubble (1965), and The Gull, and other Georgia scenes (1969). He also was a columnist for the now-defunct weekly Athens (Georgia) Observer.

Montgomery died in Crawford, Georgia, at the age of 86.

Writing

Montgomery was perhaps the leading figure in what some have called the "2nd generation" of Fugitive/Agrarian writers — writers who, like O'Connor herself, were too young to be the contemporaries of Lytle, Tate, Ransom, and Warren, but who shared many of their literary and intellectual sensibilities.

The New Georgia Encyclopedia says of his writing:

In both poetry and fiction Montgomery made his subjects palpable, giving the reader a keen sense of the flora, fauna, geography, and human culture of his region. His work, both creative and critical, is informed by his distinctive intellectual heritage. Like Flannery O'Connor, among other writers, Montgomery was influenced by the Southern Agrarians, while in theology and philosophy he was a neo-Thomist (advocating the thought of thirteenth-century philosopher Thomas Aquinas). This combination formed his traditional conservatism. The starting point in all of Montgomery's work is piety: a reverent awareness of the physical creation, moral and spiritual realities, individual gifts such as reason and imagination, and cultural life (values, customs, and traditions inherited from the past). Piety and a recovery of reason are constant themes in his writing.

Novels

He published 3 novels, all of which focus on conflicts between the Old and the New South. When he published his debut novel, The Wandering of Desire (1962), Flannery O'Connor wrote him that: "The Southern writer can outwrite anybody in the country because he has the Bible and a little history. You have more than your share of both and a spendid gift besides."

His next novel, Darrell, was published in 1964, and — in the words of his literary executor and former student Dr. Michael Jordan — "combines comedy, satire, and tragedy in its depiction of the misadventures of a country-born boy and his grandmother as they attempt to adjust to life in an Athens neighborhood. Darrell's longing for an even more exciting life in Atlanta is counterbalanced by his grandmother's common sense and longing for the country."

His most ambitious novel is 1974's Fugitive. It is an overt dramatization of the ideas that were at the center of the Fugitive/Agrarian movement. Successful country music songwriter Walt Mason, disillusioned with life in Nashville, moves to rural Georgia to become a gentleman farmer, only to find out that such a life can't be "poured in from the top," but must spring up from the roots.

Publications

Poetry

• The Gull, and other Georgia scenes. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1969.

Novels

• The Wandering of Desire. New York: Harper, 1962.
• Fugitive. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

Non-fiction

• Ezra Pound: A critical essay. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970.
• T.S. Eliot: An essay on the American magus. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1970.
• The Reflective Journey toward Order: Essays on Dante, Wordsworth, Eliot, and others. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1973.
• Eliot's Reflective Journey to the Garden. Troy, NY: Whitson, 1979.
• The Prophetic Poet and the Spirit of the Age. (3 volumes), LaSalle, IL: Sherwood Sugden.
  • Why Flannery O'Connor Stayed Home. 1981.
  • Why Poe Drank Liquor. 1983.
  • Why Hawthorne Was Melancholy. 1984.
• Possum, and other receipts for the recovery of "Southern" being. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
• The Men I Have Chosen for Fathers: Literary and philosophical passages. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1990.
• Liberal Arts and Community: The feeding of the larger body. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.
• Virtue and Modern Shadows of Turning: Preliminary agitations. Lanham, MD: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1990.
• Romantic Confusions of the Good: Beauty as truth, truth beauty. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
• Concerning Intellectual Philandering: Poets and philosophers, priests and politicians. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.
• Making: The proper habit of our being: Essays speculative, reflective, argumentative. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2000.
• The Truth of Things: Liberal arts and the recovery of reality. Dallas, TX: Spence, 1999.
• John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate: At odds about the ends of history and the mystery of nature. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003.
• Eudora Welty and Walker Percy: The concept of home in their lives and literature. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004.
• On Matters Southern: Essays about literature and culture, 1964-2000. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.
• Hillbilly Thomist: Flannery O'Connor, St. Thomas, and the limits of art. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006.
• With Walker Percy at the Tupperware Party: In company with Flannery O'Connor, T.S. Eliot, and others. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2009.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

External links

Poems

• "A Sophomore Sweats at the Seven Deadly"

Prose

• Marion Montgomery in First Things

Books

• Marion Montgomery at Amazon.com

About

• Marion Montgomery (1925-2011) in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
• Marion Montgomery )1925-)in Contemporary Literary Criticism.
• Montgomery, Marion at First Principles
• Former UGA Prof. Montgomery, Noted author and poet, dies, Online Athens.
• Marion Montgomery (1925-2011) obituary, The Weekly Standard.
• "Marion Montgomery: Prophet philosopher" at The Imaginative Conservative