Fugitive It’s Allen Tate’s 114th birthday: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Orley_Allen_Tate.jpg He’s yet another of the poets I met in the old Oxford Book of American Verse [FO Matthiessen edition] in my school library. Every November since I was sixteen I’ve found an occasion to recite these lines to myself: ‘…Autumn is desolation in the plot Of a thousand acres where these memories grow From the inexhaustible bodies that are not Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row. Think of the autumns that have come and gone!-- Ambitious November with the humors of the year, With a particular zeal for every slab, Staining the uncomfortable angels that rot On the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there: The brute curiosity of an angels stare Turns you, like them, to stone, Transforms the heaving air Till plunged to a heavier world below You shift your sea-space blindly Heaving, turning like the blind crab. Dazed by the wind, only the wind The leaves flying, plunge…’ poemhunter/poem/ode-to-the-confederate-dead/ Tate’s own account, which I came across many years later, is fascinating: vqronline.org/gallery/96/ The fact that his birthday occurs on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address seems to invite countless ironic thoughts, starting with Ill Take My Stand. There are other unforgettable lines: ‘…Stuck in the wet mire Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city I thought of Troy, what we had built her for.’ allpoetry/poem/8572661-Aeneas-At--Washington-by-Allen_Tate And: ‘…Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky And I must think a little of the past: When I was ten I told a stinking lie That got a black boy whipped; but now at last The going years, caught in an accurate glow, Reverse like balls englished upon green baize - Let them return, let the round trumpets blow The ancient crackle of the Christs deep gaze….’ ablemuse/erato/showthread.php?t=12776 And: ...The Sheriffs Goddamn was a murmured curse Not for the dead but for the blinding dust That boxed the cortege in a cloudy hearse And dragged it towards our town. I knew I must Not stay till twilight in that silent road; Sliding my bare feet into the warm crust, I hopped the stonecrop like a panting toad Mouth open, following the heaving cloud That floated to the court-house square its load Of limber corpse that took the sun for shroud. There were three fingers in the dying sun Whose light were company where three was crowd.... americanlynching/literary-old.html#tate I don’t imagine I would have liked Allen Tate in the way I imagine I would have liked John Crowe Ransom, his mentor, but his words get into your mind and stay there. ebay/itm/Collected-Poems-1919-1976-by-Allen-Tate-2007-Paperback-/141099962554?pt=US_Nonfiction_Book&hash=item20da3690ba
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 23:14:30 +0000