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Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.

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
Men
Poets
Practicals
Practical
Poet
Interested
Results
Way

More quotes by Allen Tate

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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.
Allen Tate
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We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
Allen Tate
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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
Allen Tate
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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.
Allen Tate
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I thought I heard the dark pounding its head On a rock, crying: Who are the dead?
Allen Tate
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I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.
Allen Tate
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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
Allen Tate
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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.
Allen Tate
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I have felt darkness lead me by the hand Over the hill to greet the singing dawn.
Allen Tate
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There's precious little to say between day and dark, Perhaps a few words on the implacable will Of time sailing like a magic barque Or something as fine for the amenities.
Allen Tate
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Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a ham actor, not a poet.
Allen Tate
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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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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.
Allen Tate
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But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
Allen Tate
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For often at Church I've seen the stained high glass Pour out the Virgin and Saints, twist and untwist The mortal youth of Christ astride an ass.
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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Last night I fled until I came To streets where leaking casements dripped Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame A nervous window bled.
Allen Tate
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Good manners, Madam, are had these days not For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's. The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot.
Allen Tate
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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.
Allen Tate
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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.
Allen Tate