Quote

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

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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
Ten
Little
Sky
Must
Boys
Stinking
Love
Told
Whipped
Think
Lying
Rings
Thinking
Christ
Christmas
Black
Wild
Past
Guilt

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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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We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
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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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What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
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Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
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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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Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
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For often at Church I've seen the stained high glass Pour out the Virgin and Saints, twist and untwist The mortal youth of Christ astride an ass.
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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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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!
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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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I say that what one loves is best: The midnight fastness of the heart.
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The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
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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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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
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For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain.
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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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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?
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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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