Donald Davidson (poet)

Donald Davidson
Donald Davidson in 1956
Born	Donald Grady Davidson August 8, 1893 Giles County, Tennessee, U.S.
Died	April 25, 1968 (age 74) Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Residence	Vermont, U.S.
Alma mater	Vanderbilt University
Occupation	Poet, college professor
Parent(s)	William Bluford Davidson Elma Wells Davidson

Donald Grady Davidson (August 8, 1893 – April 25, 1968) was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author. He is best known as a founding member of the Nashville, Tennessee circle of poets known as the Fugitives and of an overlapping group, the Southern Agrarians.

Davidson was born in Campbellsville in Giles County, Tennessee, to William Bluford Davidson, a teacher and school administrator, and Elma Wells Davidson, a music and elocution teacher. He received a classical education at Branham and Hughes Military Academy, a preparatory school in Spring Hill, Tennessee. He earned both his bachelor's (1917) and master's (1922) degrees at Vanderbilt University. He later received honorary doctorates from Cumberland University, Washington and Lee University, and Middlebury College. He served as a lieutenant in the United States Army during World War I. In June 1918, he married Theresa Sherrer, a legal scholar and artist. While at Vanderbilt, Davidson became associated with the Fugitives, who met to read and criticize each other's verse. Later, they founded a review of the same name, which launched the literary careers of the poets and critics John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren, the poet Laura Riding, and the poet and psychiatrist Merrill Moore. He enjoyed a national reputation as a poet, in part due to the inclusion of his dramatic monologue, "Lee in the Mountains", in early editions of the influential college literature textbook Understanding Poetry. Its editors were his former students Warren and Cleanth Brooks. From 1923 to 1930, Davidson reviewed books and edited the Nashville Tennessean book page, where he assessed more than 370 books. The book page was well respected and syndicated to other newspapers.