Allen Tate
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 TateThe innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
Allen TatePoets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results.
Allen TateReligion is the sole technique for the validating of values.
Allen TateWhat is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
Allen TateFor 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.
Allen TateI 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.
Allen TateNarcissism 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.
Allen TateHow 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.
Allen TateBut in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
Allen TateMen expect too much, do too little.
Allen TateGenetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
Allen TateThe only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
Allen TateAccording 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