Quote

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

More quotes by Allen Tate

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Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
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But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
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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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My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears.
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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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I have felt darkness lead me by the hand Over the hill to greet the singing dawn.
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The idiot greens the meadow with his eyes, The meadow creeps implacable and still A dog barks, the hammock swings, he lies. One two three the cows bulge on the hill.
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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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The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
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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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Dramatic experience is not logical it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.
Allen Tate
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Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.
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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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In the cold morning the rested street stands up To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.
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We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
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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 a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
Allen Tate
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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.
Allen Tate
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The dreary flies, lazy and casual, Stick to the ceiling, buzz along the wall. O heart, the spider shuffles from the mould Weaving, between the pinks and grapes, his pall.
Allen Tate
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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.
Allen Tate