Allen Tate Quotes - Page 2

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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.

  Allen Tate

  Criticism, Experience, May

  Allen Tate (1999). “Essays of Four Decades”, Isi Books

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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.

  Allen Tate

  Perfect, Interesting, Want

  allen tate (1953). “the man of letters in the modern world”

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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.

  Allen Tate

  War, Fighting, Winning

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.70, Macmillan

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• 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

  Lakes, Saws, Sullen

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.136, Macmillan

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• Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation.

  Allen Tate

  Psychological, Theory, Deals

  allen tate (1953). “the man of letters in the modern world”

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• Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.

  Allen Tate

  Religion, Technique, Sole

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• 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

  Christian, Self, Expression

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.16, Macmillan

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• In the cold morning the rested street stands up
  To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.

  Allen Tate

  Morning, Clerks, World

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.195, Macmillan

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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

  Horse, Leader, Faces

  Allen Tate (1960). “Poems”, New York : Scribner

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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.

  Allen Tate

  Ambition, Doctors, Desire

  allen tate (1953). “the man of letters in the modern world”

  24 Copy quote

• I say that what one loves is best:
  The midnight fastness of the heart.

  Allen Tate

  Heart, Love Is, Midnight

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.162, Macmillan

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• There is a calm for you where men and women
  Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.

  Allen Tate

  Moving, Men, Feet

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.3, Macmillan

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• 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

  Loss, Roots, Feet

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.177, Macmillan

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• Last night I fled until I came
  To streets where leaking casements dripped
  Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame;
  A nervous window bled.

  Allen Tate

  Night, Flames, Lasts

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.207, Macmillan

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• Let us lie down once more by the breathing side
  Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep
  As if the Known Sea still were a month wide--
  Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!

  Allen Tate

  Lying, Ocean, Sleep

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.67, Macmillan

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• Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space
  Come once a day to suffocate the sight.

  Allen Tate

  Twilight, Sight, Space

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.72, Macmillan

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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.

  Allen Tate

  Dog, Lying, Eye

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.17, Macmillan

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• But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.

  Allen Tate

  Age, Glitter, Weak

  allen tate (1953). “the man of letters in the modern world”

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• 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

  Two, Quality, Three

  allen tate (1953). “the man of letters in the modern world”

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• we know our end
  A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.

  Allen Tate

  Garden, Tissues, Worms

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.13, Macmillan

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• For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain.

  Allen Tate

  Waste, Drains, Intellect

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.12, Macmillan

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• Venus knows country matters: country knows Venus:
  For Love, Dione's boy, was born on the farm.

  Allen Tate

  Country, Boys, Venus

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.159, Macmillan

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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.

  Allen Tate

  Glasses, Church, Twists

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.28, Macmillan

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• Antiquity breached mortality with myths.
  Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates
  A cornice on the Third National Bank.

  Allen Tate

  Vocabulary, Mortality, Hermes

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.11, Macmillan

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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.

  Allen Tate

  Twilight, Fall, Eye

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.193, Macmillan

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