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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.

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
Hard
Poet
Poetry
Side
Loses
Fights
Sides
Wins
Winning
Defeated
Fighting
Whoever
War
Passionate

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What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
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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!
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Antiquity breached mortality with myths. Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates A cornice on the Third National Bank.
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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
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Let us begin to understand the argument. There is a solution to everything: Science.
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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.
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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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The day's at end and there's nowhere to go, Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying Get up and once again politely lying Invite the ladies toward the mistletoe.
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Death's long anabasis.
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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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we know our end A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.
Allen Tate
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Men expect too much, do too little.
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For some reason most critics have a hard time fixing their minds directly under their noses, and before they see the object that is there they use a telescope upon the horizon to see where it came from.
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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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There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
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Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a ham actor, not a poet.
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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
Allen Tate
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We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
Allen Tate
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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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We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
Allen Tate