About Allen Tate: John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.
We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
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.
Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!
Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
