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
Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker. – 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 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