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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.
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
Mine
Lilies
Asking
Weed
Serious
Plot
Days
Manners
Madam
Used
Loud
Grenade
Good
Comic
Bursts
Smile
Lily
Mines
Weeds
More quotes by Allen Tate
So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
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
Venus knows country matters: country knows Venus: For Love, Dione's boy, was born on the farm.
Allen Tate
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
All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead.
Allen Tate
Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.
Allen Tate
Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
Allen Tate
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.
Allen Tate
we know our end A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.
Allen Tate
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
A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three never less than all.
Allen Tate
But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
Allen Tate
At twelve I was determined to shoot only For honor at twenty not to shoot at all I know at thirty-three that one must shoot As often as one gets the rare chance - In killing there is more than commentary.
Allen Tate
Narcissism and the Confederate dead cannot be connected logically, or even historically even were the connection an historical fact, they would not stand connected as art, for no one experiences raw history.
Allen Tate