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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.
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
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Winchester
Kentucky
John Orley Allen Tate
Perfect
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More quotes by Allen Tate
Let us lie down once more by the breathing side Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep As if the Known Sea still were a month wide-- Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears.
Allen Tate
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!
Allen Tate
we know our end A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.
Allen Tate
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
I have felt darkness lead me by the hand Over the hill to greet the singing dawn.
Allen Tate
The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
Allen Tate
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
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.
Allen Tate
Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
Allen Tate
Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
Allen Tate
Men expect too much, do too little, Put the contraption before the accomplishment, Lack skill of the interior mind To fashion dignity with shapes of air. Luxury, yes but not elegance!
Allen Tate
The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
Allen Tate
What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
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