Allen Tate

“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.”

“Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.”

“What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!”

“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.”

“Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.”

“Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.”

“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.”

“At twelve I was determined to shoot only For honor; at twenty not to shoot at all; I know at thirty-three that one must shoot As often as one gets the rare chance - In killing there is more than commentary.”

“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.”

“Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation.”

“The mission for the day is to encourage students to think beyond traditional career opportunities, prepare for future careers and entrance into the workplace.”

“Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results.”

“The Spring I seek is in a new face only.”

“We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.”