Quote

Our loss put six feet under ground Is measured by the magnolia's root Our gain's the intellectual sound Of death's feet round a weedy tomb.

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
Loss
Round
Feet
Rounds
Weedy
Sound
Gain
Magnolia
Death
Six
Magnolias
Gains
Tomb
Roots
Tombs
Ground
Measured
Intellectual
Root

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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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Let us begin to understand the argument. There is a solution to everything: Science.
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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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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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So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.
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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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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.
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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
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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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There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
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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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The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
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Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.
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The twilight is long fingers and black hair.
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I say that what one loves is best: The midnight fastness of the heart.
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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.
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Death's long anabasis.
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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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The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
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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.
Allen Tate