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. ↗

— Allen Tate

#any #conditions #history #instance #less

But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age. ↗

— Allen Tate

#am #appeal #authority #i #i am

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 Tate

#criticism #dramatic #experience #form #indicate

Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama. ↗

— Allen Tate

#conflict #drama #experience #means #natures

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

— Allen Tate

#been #cherished #detachment #gather #genetic

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. ↗

— Allen Tate

#come #does #geneticists #happen #how

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. ↗

— Allen Tate

#besides #deal #dreams #great #great deal

I 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 Tate

#believe #change #denotes #i #i believe

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. ↗

— Allen Tate

#apart #knower #knowing #manner #neither

Men expect too much, do too little. ↗

— Allen Tate

#little #men #much #too #too much