Allen Tate Quotes
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Men expect too much, do too little.
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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.
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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.
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The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail; Far off a precise whistle is escheat To the dark; and then the towering weak and pale....
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Venus knows country matters: country knows Venus: For Love, Dione's boy, was born on the farm.
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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....
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So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
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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.
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The mission for the day is to encourage students to think beyond traditional career opportunities, prepare for future careers and entrance into the workplace.
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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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Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.
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The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
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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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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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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.
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We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.
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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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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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Death's long anabasis.
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In the cold morning the rested street stands up To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.
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The torrent of the reaching shade Broke shadow into all its parts, What then had been of shadow made Found exigence in fits and starts...
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The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
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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.
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Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.