Word: tates
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...reading Tate's poems we are struck first by the formality of the versification, listening to them, we finally begin to feel the inner rhythm, the naturalness of it, in spite of, no because of, the great care with which it was planned...
...Tate's artistic demands on himself are even more stringent than his social demands. His early training was rigorous. "In his Advanced Composition class. Mr. Ransom would assign all of Shakespeare's sonnets for us to study," Tate remembers. "Then we'd have to write a Shakespearean sonnet of our own, then an Italian sonnet...
Poetic models continued to figure in Tate's development for some time. "I didn't read any of T.S. Eliot till 1920," he explains, "though I'd read some of Pound. When I read Eliot, I couldn't write anything for a long time. Critics have pointed out that I'd written Eliotic poems before I read Eliot. That often happens in a certain period; people begin to do the same thing independently. But Eliot was so much more mature, you see, and I was just a boy. He rather overwhelmed me. So for awhile, I had to avoid that...
...Although Tate's early work can, on occasion, be derivative or hesitant ("It begins in uncertainty," said one critic, "and attains meaning only during composition"), his more mature poems are unquestionably written in his own voice--elegant, allusive, densely packed like semi-precious stones inside a glass paperweight. His later poems show a solidity, a self-confidence, not always removed from stubborness...
...Since Tate never raises his voice or flaunts his feelings, a superficial reading of his poems can be bewildering, if not discouraging. A careful reading offers the rewards of getting to know someone who is terribly shy, but very wise...