Quote

We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.

Allen Tate

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Lived
Dying
Afraid

More quotes by Allen Tate

Image
Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.
Allen Tate
Image
In the cold morning the rested street stands up To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.
Allen Tate
Image
Venus knows country matters: country knows Venus: For Love, Dione's boy, was born on the farm.
Allen Tate
Image
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!
Allen Tate
Image
My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears.
Allen Tate
Image
Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
Allen Tate
Image
What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
Allen Tate
Image
Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
Allen Tate
Image
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.
Allen Tate
Image
Dramatic experience is not logical it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.
Allen Tate
Image
I have felt darkness lead me by the hand Over the hill to greet the singing dawn.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
I had kept opaque Down deeper than the canyons undersea The sullen spectrum of a buried lake Nobody saw not seen even by me.
Allen Tate
Image
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.
Allen Tate
Image
In an age of abstract experience, fornication Is self-expression, adjunct to Christian euphoria, And whores become delinquents delinquents, patients Patients, wards of society. Whores, by that rule, Are precious.
Allen Tate
Image
Now remember courage, go to the door,Open it and see whether coiled on the bedOr cringing by the wall, a savage beastMaybe with golden hair, with deep eyesLike a bearded spider on a sunlit floorWill snarl-and man can never be alone.
Allen Tate
Image
Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
Allen Tate
Image
Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
Allen Tate