Quote

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.

Allen Tate

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Allen Tate
Age: 79 †
Born: 1899
Born: November 19
Died: 1979
Died: February 9
Author
Literary Critic
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Winchester
Kentucky
John Orley Allen Tate
Keys
Term
Another
Modulation
Change
Denotes
Music
Uninterrupted
Without
Shift
Believe
Rhythm
Measure

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Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
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The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
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Walk in this faithless grass with studious tread, Lest mice, weasels, germane beasts, too soon The tall hat and eyes, the fierce feet, for dead Descry, and fix you prone in their revelling moon.
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What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
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Men expect too much, do too little.
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Therefore with idle hands and head I sit In late December before the fire's daze Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.
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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.
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So the dubbed conceit Played nursery of cheat To clear the I of sleet.
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Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky And I must think a little of the past: When I was ten I told a stinking lie That got a black boy whipped.
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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.
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Let us begin to understand the argument. There is a solution to everything: Science.
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Swimmer of noonday, lean for the perfect dive To the dead Mother's face, whose subtile down You had not seen take amber light alive.
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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
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But we shall not know the world by looking at it we know it by looking at the hovering fly.
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There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.
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And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane and fall Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.
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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.
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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.
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So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
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Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
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