Allen Tate quotes

What is the flesh and blood compounded ofBut a few moments in the life of time?This prowling of the cells, litigious love,Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime. (Allen Tate)
Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama. View quote
Allen Tate
For some reason most critics have a hard time fixing their minds directly under their noses, and before they see the object that is there they use a telescope upon the horizon to see where it came from. View quote
Allen Tate
So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman. View quote
Allen Tate
According to its doctors, my one intransigent desire is to have been a Confederate general, and because I could not or would not become anything else, I set up for poet and beg an to invent fictions about the personal ambitions that my society has no use for. View quote
Allen Tate
Narcissism and the Confederate dead cannot be connected logically, or even historically; even were the connection an historical fact, they would not stand connected as art, for no one experiences raw history. View quote
Allen Tate
Now remember courage, go to the door,Open it and see whether coiled on the bedOr cringing by the wall, a savage beastMaybe with golden hair, with deep eyesLike a bearded spider on a sunlit floorWill snarl-and man can never be alone. View quote
Allen Tate
Men expect too much, do too little. View quote
Allen Tate
The mission for the day is to encourage students to think beyond traditional career opportunities, prepare for future careers and entrance into the workplace. View quote
Allen Tate
In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem. View quote
Allen Tate
Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them. (Allen Tate)
What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why. View quote
Allen Tate
The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem. View quote
Allen Tate
At twelve I was determined to shoot only For honor; at twenty not to shoot at all; I know at thirty-three that one must shoot As often as one gets the rare chance - In killing there is more than commentary. View quote
Allen Tate
Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results. View quote
Allen Tate
Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form. View quote
Allen Tate
I believe the term modulation denotes in music the uninterrupted shift from one key to another: I do not know the term for change of rhythm without change of measure. View quote
Allen Tate
But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age. View quote
Allen Tate
A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all. View quote
Allen Tate
How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry. View quote
Allen Tate
Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation. (Allen Tate)
The Spring I seek is in a new face only. View quote
Allen Tate
We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate. View quote
Allen Tate
Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment. View quote
Allen Tate
Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values. View quote
Allen Tate