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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
Perfect
Automobile
Makes
Plain
Cannot
Versions
Persons
Poet
Even
Failure
Fictitious
Something
Nobody
Predicament
Life
Wants
Predicaments
Interesting
Salesman

More quotes by Allen Tate

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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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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.
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So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
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All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead.
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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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Narcissism and the Confederate dead cannot be connected logically, or even historically even were the connection an historical fact, they would not stand connected as art, for no one experiences raw history.
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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Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
Allen Tate
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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 only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
Allen Tate
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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.
Allen Tate
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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.
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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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My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears.
Allen Tate
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In the cold morning the rested street stands up To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.
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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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
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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
Allen Tate
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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.
Allen Tate
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we know our end A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.
Allen Tate