Allen Tate
Allen Tate
John Orley Allen Tate, known professionally as Allen Tate, was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate from 1943 to 1944...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth19 November 1899
CountryUnited States of America
love-you son boys
My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears....
age faces calm
So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
eye moon feet
Walk in this faithless grass with studious tread, Lest mice, weasels, germane beasts, too soon The tall hat and eyes, the fierce feet, for dead Descry, and fix you prone in their revelling moon.
night flames lasts
Last night I fled until I came To streets where leaking casements dripped Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame; A nervous window bled.
lakes opaque saws
I had kept opaque Down deeper than the canyons undersea The sullen spectrum of a buried lake Nobody saw; not seen even by me....
nursery cheat conceit
So the dubbed conceit Played nursery of cheat To clear the I of sleet....
home sea venus
All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead....
people may faces
POET If not in a place, where are the People weeping? LIBERAL They creep weeping in the face, not place. POET Is it something with which we may cope The weeping, the creeping, the peepee-ing, the peeping?
two quality may
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.
perfection effort culture
Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
drama mean conflict
Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.
honor twelve three
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.
age glitter weak
But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
talking knowing poet
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.