TYPED LETTER SIGNED (TLS) to John Crowe Ransom Praising Theodore Roethke

Seattle, 24 April 1954. Letter. About Fine. Fine, single-spaced typed letter on one side of a 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper to poet and teacher John Crowe Ransom SIGNED "Jim Wright" about permission to reprint a poem first published in THE KENYON REVIEW. Wright, 26 at the time, was a former student of Ransom's at Kenyon College and here talks about how engaging graduate school (the University of Washington) is. "You will be glad to hear that Mr. Roethke is apparently over the worst of his illness, and is teaching again. He is as brilliant and stimulating as ever. It is a curious experience to work in his class. He knows, mysteriously perhaps, a thousand practical ways of conveying to students the necessity for formal mastery in poetry. He is capable of taking fantastic pains with a single small exercise; and his exercises, even the small ones, are always difficult and engaging. Finally, I think he is the best reader of poetry I have ever heard, with the exception of Dylan Thomas." Pencil notation in upper blank margin by Ransom.