Quote

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.

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
Long
Staring
Soundless
Would
Fingers
Deftly
Despair
Wink
Across
Crawl
Seen
Mild
Eyes
Fiery
Eye
Stare
Fall
Twilight

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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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Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
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For some reason most critics have a hard time fixing their minds directly under their noses, and before they see the object that is there they use a telescope upon the horizon to see where it came from.
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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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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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All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead.
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The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
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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.
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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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Men expect too much, do too little.
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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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We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
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Dramatic experience is not logical it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.
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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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I have felt darkness lead me by the hand Over the hill to greet the singing dawn.
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Peering, I heard the hooves come down the hill. The posse passed, twelve horse the leader's face Was worn as limestone on an ancient sill.
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The poet is he who fights on the passionate Side and whoever loses he wins when he Is defeated it is hard to say who wins.
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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
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But we shall not know the world by looking at it we know it by looking at the hovering fly.
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Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.
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