Allen Tate Quotes - Page 3

William Blake cursed the flesh for a clod, Yet of some of his sayings we Moderns have heard tell: 'The nakedness of woman is the work of God', Or that title--The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

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.

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

Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a ham actor, not a poet.

Antiquity breached mortality with myths. Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates A cornice on the Third National Bank.

There's precious little to say between day and dark, Perhaps a few words on the implacable will Of time sailing like a magic barque Or something as fine for the amenities.

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.

The dreary flies, lazy and casual, Stick to the ceiling, buzz along the wall. O heart, the spider shuffles from the mould Weaving, between the pinks and grapes, his pall.

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?

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.

Good manners, Madam, are had these days not For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's. The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot.

The day's at end and there's nowhere to go, Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying; Get up and once again politely lying Invite the ladies toward the mistletoe.

What is the flesh and blood compounded ofBut a few moments in the life of time?This prowling of the cells, litigious love,Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.

Struck in the wet mire Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city I thought of Troy, what we had built her for.

My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears.

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.

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

Therefore with idle hands and head I sit In late December before the fire's daze Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.

Death's long anabasis.

And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane and fall Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.

So the dubbed conceit Played nursery of cheat To clear the I of sleet.

Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.

Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red Reverberance of hail upon the dead Thunder like an exploding crucible!

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.

Now remember courage, go to the door,Open it and see whether coiled on the bedOr cringing by the wall, a savage beastMaybe with golden hair, with deep eyesLike a bearded spider on a sunlit floorWill snarl-and man can never be alone.