Quote

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.

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
Faces
Dive
Perfect
Lean
Swimming
Mother
Whose
Light
Dead
Take
Seen
Noonday
Alive
Swimmer
Face
Amber

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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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What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
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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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The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
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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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Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.
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How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.
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We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
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Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.
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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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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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We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
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Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
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The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
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Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation.
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The dreary flies, lazy and casual, Stick to the ceiling, buzz along the wall. O heart, the spider shuffles from the mould Weaving, between the pinks and grapes, his pall.
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Good manners, Madam, are had these days not For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's. The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot.
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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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