"A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all"
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Tate is pushing back against the lazy habit of treating poems like evidence in a separate argument: a moral lesson here, a sociological snapshot there, a case study in trauma somewhere else. The line is a refusal of reduction. Yes, a poem can carry morality, register its social moment, even reveal a mind at work across time. But to isolate any one strand is to misread what poetry does best: fuse competing kinds of knowledge into a single, pressurized form.
The key word is "instance" - not "message" or "mirror". An instance is a concrete occasion where abstractions take on flesh. Tate, a Southern Agrarian turned high priest of midcentury New Criticism, is defending the poem as an irreducible artifact, something made, not merely reported. In that intellectual climate, critics were battling two temptations: moralizing literature into sermons and historicizing it into documents. Tate’s answer is wholeness, but not the bland kind. The poem is "never less than all" because its parts argue with each other. Ethics collides with desire; social reality clashes with private myth; psychological history surfaces as rhythm and image rather than clinical confession.
Subtext: the poem’s meaning isn’t located in a detachable takeaway. It lives in the arrangement - the tensions, ironies, and formal decisions that force multiple truths to coexist. Tate’s intent is almost disciplinary: if you want to use a poem, you must first submit to it, on its own terms, as a total experience rather than a convenient citation.
The key word is "instance" - not "message" or "mirror". An instance is a concrete occasion where abstractions take on flesh. Tate, a Southern Agrarian turned high priest of midcentury New Criticism, is defending the poem as an irreducible artifact, something made, not merely reported. In that intellectual climate, critics were battling two temptations: moralizing literature into sermons and historicizing it into documents. Tate’s answer is wholeness, but not the bland kind. The poem is "never less than all" because its parts argue with each other. Ethics collides with desire; social reality clashes with private myth; psychological history surfaces as rhythm and image rather than clinical confession.
Subtext: the poem’s meaning isn’t located in a detachable takeaway. It lives in the arrangement - the tensions, ironies, and formal decisions that force multiple truths to coexist. Tate’s intent is almost disciplinary: if you want to use a poem, you must first submit to it, on its own terms, as a total experience rather than a convenient citation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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