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.
quote by Allen Tate
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Allen Tate
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Allen Tate
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Allen Tate
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Allen Tate
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Allen Tate
Added by Lucian Velea
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Unnatural Love
Landor, not that I doubt your word,
That you had strove with none
At seventy-five and had deferred
To nature and art alone;
It is rather that at thirty-two
From us I see them part
After they served, so sweetly, you-
Yet nature has no heart:
Brother and sister are estranged
By his ambitious lies
For he his sister Helen much deranged-
Outraged her, and put coppers on her eyes.
poem by Allen Tate
Added by Poetry Lover
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