Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker. – Allen Tate
Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them. – Allen Tate
There is probably nothing wrong with art for arts sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago. – Allen Tate
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
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. – T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919