Quote

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.

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
Used
Loud
Grenade
Good
Comic
Bursts
Smile
Lily
Mines
Weeds
Mine
Lilies
Asking
Weed
Serious
Plot
Days
Manners
Madam

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Struck in the wet mire Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city I thought of Troy, what we had built her for.
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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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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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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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Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red Reverberance of hail upon the dead Thunder like an exploding crucible!
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For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain.
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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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The mission for the day is to encourage students to think beyond traditional career opportunities, prepare for future careers and entrance into the workplace.
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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.
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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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Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
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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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We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
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But we shall not know the world by looking at it we know it by looking at the hovering fly.
Allen Tate
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Let us begin to understand the argument. There is a solution to everything: Science.
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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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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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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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I thought I heard the dark pounding its head On a rock, crying: Who are the dead?
Allen Tate
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The twilight is long fingers and black hair.
Allen Tate