In the thirties (and it did not end with the thirties) I greatly admired Tate for the sonorous and noble effects in much of his poetry, which I wanted to make a part of my own. Moreover, certain rhythms or, perhaps more accurately, turns of phrase seemed to me so finely and inevitably poetic that all that could be done was to try to echo them…. (p. 234)

The following is what I started by saying when I [reviewed Tate's Poems 1920–1945: A Selection (published in England) in 1948] (I had just quoted the end of Ransom's "Survey of Literature"—"God have mercy on the sinner / Who must write with … Only consonants and vowels"):

We should be obtuse indeed if we despised mere consonants and vowels. The preeminent virtue of Allen Tate's poetry seems to me to be precisely the consistent integrity of its language. I can think of no other living poet (and I include Mr. Eliot) who has made fewer concessions to the easy, the rehearsed or the slipshod methods of writing verse…. I'm aware, I think, of all the objections which can be made to Tate's poetry. It is often very obscure—sometimes needlessly obscure: it is often very thick—like metaphysical poetry without the tropes: occasionally it is rather irritatingly illogical. And many poems have for an end or a climax instead of a shot to the bull's-eye a piece of ambiguity which lays too heavy a task on the reader's imagination or powers of interpretation. But then again it seems to me that even these faults add up to a kind of virtue—although it is perhaps only an historical virtue. Tate's poetry is very much a part of dissident art—confused, perhaps, but unconsciously as well as deliberately probing at the contradictions of modern existence and seeking redeeming integrations.

I hope these ancient words, so naïvely presumptuous about the road and duty of the poet, have nonetheless been worth resuscitating. To me they are interesting as showing that thirty years ago Tate seemed preeminently part of the obscurer end of the "Modern Movement," whereas now any obscurity would be taken more or less for granted. (pp. 235-36)

[The] section of "Early Poems" [from Collected Poems 1919–1976] consists of forty-six pieces, none of them labeled later than "1924."

The juvenilia of few poets could stand such an exhumation. But there is little here of merely morbid interest: on the contrary, much to astound and delight. A whole vestibule, as it were, has been added to the edifice of Tate's poetry—and thereby light is let in and perspectives meaningfully lengthened. Many of these early poems remind us of the strange epoch of poetic difficulty and even non-meaning they come from—so strange as often to disarm us by the effects produced:

     We made a silence, for teacups, once
     After cosmic gall had bittered a lidless night,
     Then touched the dizzy apples of Acrasia, once,—
     Once we were shattered with a storm of light.

The linguistic and musical splendor of the mature Tate is often thus prefigured. But the section is far more than a version of a poetry that was going to improve in finish, unity, and authority; in its quite compact extent it indicates Tate's origins as a poet and also a number of "ways not taken." (p. 238)

As a young man Tate was a poet full of fancy, energy, cleverness, and cockiness. A poem like "Resurgam," where Ransom and Eliot have largely replaced earlier influences, is in no sense an exercise and survives as something with a phrase-making and rhythmic power illuminating and even going beyond its inspirers:

        Life stood on the top stair a moment
        Waved her last gray slander down the stair,
        I will not forget her absent eyes
        Her other smile like one rose
        Falling, falling everywhere.
                                               (p. 239)

[We] must greatly regret that in Tate the obligation to Eliotesque solemnity left so little room for Eliotesque frivolity. Although the "Two Conceits" from his later years is not, truth to say, a really successful bit of fun, the man himself is humorous and ironic, fertile in informal judgments of humans and art, and born at a later time (when "light" verse came to acquire more sanction) could surely have more often laid aside the bardic robes. (p. 240)

Tate is especially a poet needing to be read aloud. I have perhaps gone on too much about his obscurity (and may touch on it again) but there is no doubt that poems that seem daunting to the eye, both prosodically and semantically, immediately surrender more of themselves if spoken.

"Trapped in a burly house" one reads in an early poem and can't help smiling at the epithet—so unexpected, so nearly undescriptive, so poetic, so Tatean. Of course, the mature poetry is full of such felicities and they were part of Tate's initial appeal to me, are part of his perennial appeal, of his essential poetic creativity. But we are bound to ask ourselves, particularly in view of the troubled times during which his poems have been available, if his humanity, his message, his reaction to those times have adequately matched his ingenious interest in language and culture, in poetry qua poetry. (p. 242)

Tate's flowering was in the nihilism of the post-1914–1918 Western world. The futility of urban life and the sterility of thought (very Rickwordian) may be seen in poems like "Retroduction to American History." Rickword emerged from all that as a Marxist; Crane committed suicide. Tate embraced Roman Catholicism but I think only at rare moments (possibly most notably in "The Eagle") can he be regarded as a religious poet…. That he was so firmly fixed in his formative period (which this book now gives so much more extended a view of) is surely a reason for the comparative exiguousness of his later poetry.

Yet despite its sparseness there is no falling off, rather, notable accretions. In the 1943 "Ode to Our Young Proconsuls of the Air" (which more and more I come to think of as a very remarkable poem indeed) Tate's conservatism is even more ambiguous than in earlier times, the irony poured out in doubles, not singles. And it could be argued that not until 1944, in "Seasons of the Soul" (which must be one of the best modern poems), does Tate's humanity fully reveal itself…. (pp. 242-43)

One has a twinge of regret that when, later, Tate set off on a long autobiographical poem (still unfinished) he chose that form so apt in English to lead to trouble—terza rima. Despite the many marvels in the three sections we have of it, we can't help wanting more of this response to "experience," even if of a less grand and ingenious kind….

But I must not … depreciate the beauties and mysteries—essentially verbal but more than verbal—of Tate's poetry at every stage of his career. In a real sense they are its justification and seem inexhaustible…. (p. 243)

Tate has survived his times and mere contemporaneities, not by ignoring them or being irrelevant to them but by sticking to his highest aspirations and exercising his talents so far as possible always at their best. Who will ever feel that he had plumbed this poetry or that it holds for him no further meanings or astonishments? As will be clear, I myself have eliminated over the years almost all of the grudging element in my reading of this poet whose reputation I believe can only ever be threatened by temporary trendiness among critics and readers. (p. 244)