Quote

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

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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
Guilt
Daze
Therefore
Punished
Crime
December
Late
Crimes
Head
Idle
Fire
Quit
Hands
Quitting
Would
Christmas

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The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
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Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation.
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Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
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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.
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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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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
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Let us begin to understand the argument. There is a solution to everything: Science.
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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.
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I say that what one loves is best: The midnight fastness of the heart.
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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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Men expect too much, do too little.
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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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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 Spring I seek is in a new face only.
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we know our end A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.
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What was I saying? An Egyptian king Once touched long fingers, which are not anything.
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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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Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
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