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
So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman. – Allen Tate
Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values. – Allen Tate
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
So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and… Wanda Sykes and John Legend… were adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And thats the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship. – Henry Louis Gates