Quote

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

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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
Littles
Luxury
Little
Lack
Much
Dignity
Contraption
Mind
Shapes
Interior
Men
Expect
Interiors
Skills
Elegance
Air
Accomplishment
Fashion
Skill

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We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
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So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
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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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Let us begin to understand the argument. There is a solution to everything: Science.
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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.
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But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
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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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William Blake cursed the flesh for a clod, Yet of some of his sayings we Moderns have heard tell: 'The nakedness of woman is the work of God', Or that title--The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
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According to its doctors, my one intransigent desire is to have been a Confederate general, and because I could not or would not become anything else, I set up for poet and beg an to invent fictions about the personal ambitions that my society has no use for.
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Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
Allen Tate