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

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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
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So the dubbed conceit Played nursery of cheat To clear the I of sleet.
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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.
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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 say that what one loves is best: The midnight fastness of the heart.
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Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.
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In an age of abstract experience, fornication Is self-expression, adjunct to Christian euphoria, And whores become delinquents delinquents, patients Patients, wards of society. Whores, by that rule, Are precious.
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I thought I heard the dark pounding its head On a rock, crying: Who are the dead?
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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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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
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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.
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Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.
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Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
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The torrent of the reaching shade Broke shadow into all its parts, What then had been of shadow made Found exigence in fits and starts.
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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.
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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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Men expect too much, do too little.
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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.
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The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
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