Quote

The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

Allen Tate

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Poem
Critics
Finished
Evidence
Bring
May
Real
Gaze
Critic

More quotes by Allen Tate

Image
The twilight is long fingers and black hair.
Allen Tate
Image
The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
Allen Tate
Image
Venus knows country matters: country knows Venus: For Love, Dione's boy, was born on the farm.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
Antiquity breached mortality with myths. Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates A cornice on the Third National Bank.
Allen Tate
Image
Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
POET If not in a place, where are the People weeping? LIBERAL They creep weeping in the face, not place. POET Is it something with which we may cope The weeping, the creeping, the peepee-ing, the peeping?
Allen Tate
Image
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.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
Allen Tate
Image
Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.
Allen Tate
Image
What was I saying? An Egyptian king Once touched long fingers, which are not anything.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
Allen Tate
Image
Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
Allen Tate