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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
Writer
Winchester
Kentucky
John Orley Allen Tate
Interesting
Salesman
Perfect
Automobile
Makes
Plain
Cannot
Versions
Persons
Poet
Even
Failure
Fictitious
Something
Nobody
Predicament
Life
Wants
Predicaments

More quotes by Allen Tate

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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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The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail Far off a precise whistle is escheat To the dark and then the towering weak and pale.
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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.
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I had kept opaque Down deeper than the canyons undersea The sullen spectrum of a buried lake Nobody saw not seen even by me.
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The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
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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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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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Last night I fled until I came To streets where leaking casements dripped Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame A nervous window bled.
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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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Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.
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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.
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Let us begin to understand the argument. There is a solution to everything: Science.
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There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
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Our loss put six feet under ground Is measured by the magnolia's root Our gain's the intellectual sound Of death's feet round a weedy tomb.
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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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And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane and fall Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.
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Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
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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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Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
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Men expect too much, do too little.
Allen Tate