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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.

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
Reader
Says
Knower
Knowing
Poem
Talking
Manner
Words
Apart
Anything
Speaking
Neither
Poet

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Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red Reverberance of hail upon the dead Thunder like an exploding crucible!
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My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears.
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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
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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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Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
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William Blake cursed the flesh for a clod, Yet of some of his sayings we Moderns have heard tell: 'The nakedness of woman is the work of God', Or that title--The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
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For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain.
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Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a ham actor, not a poet.
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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.
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So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
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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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The day's at end and there's nowhere to go, Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying Get up and once again politely lying Invite the ladies toward the mistletoe.
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Antiquity breached mortality with myths. Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates A cornice on the Third National Bank.
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Peering, I heard the hooves come down the hill. The posse passed, twelve horse the leader's face Was worn as limestone on an ancient sill.
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Venus knows country matters: country knows Venus: For Love, Dione's boy, was born on the farm.
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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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The poet is he who fights on the passionate Side and whoever loses he wins when he Is defeated it is hard to say who wins.
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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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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.
Allen Tate