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
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
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
Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything Ive learned about poetry – the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible – but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novels length, satisfies the reader. – Ron Rash