"Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form"
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Tate’s line is a cool splash of water on the well-meaning critic who wants a poem to behave like an argument. “Dramatic experience” names the thing art traffics in: pressure, conflict, revelation, the felt mess of time as it’s lived rather than diagrammed. It’s not “logical” because it doesn’t proceed by proof; it proceeds by collision. Characters contradict themselves. Images recur with new voltage. Meaning arrives late, sideways, or not at all.
What saves this from anti-intellectual shrugging is Tate’s verb: “subdued.” Coherence isn’t discovered like a theorem; it’s imposed, disciplined, wrestled into shape. Form is not a decorative frame but a governing force that makes unruly experience legible without pretending it’s tidy. That’s a very New Critic move (Tate lived in that neighborhood), but with a poet’s suspicion of critical overreach: the coherence we praise is “the kind” we “indicate” when we speak of form. Indicate, not exhaust. Critics point; the work remains larger than the pointing.
The subtext is a warning against mistaking paraphrase for understanding. If you go hunting for a neat takeaway, you’ll miss the dramatic intelligence of the piece: how tone, pacing, syntax, and image carry contradictions that no summary can hold. Tate is defending art’s right to be structured without being reducible, to be coherent without being merely rational. Form becomes the compromise between chaos and clarity: not logic, but a hard-won order that keeps the experience alive.
What saves this from anti-intellectual shrugging is Tate’s verb: “subdued.” Coherence isn’t discovered like a theorem; it’s imposed, disciplined, wrestled into shape. Form is not a decorative frame but a governing force that makes unruly experience legible without pretending it’s tidy. That’s a very New Critic move (Tate lived in that neighborhood), but with a poet’s suspicion of critical overreach: the coherence we praise is “the kind” we “indicate” when we speak of form. Indicate, not exhaust. Critics point; the work remains larger than the pointing.
The subtext is a warning against mistaking paraphrase for understanding. If you go hunting for a neat takeaway, you’ll miss the dramatic intelligence of the piece: how tone, pacing, syntax, and image carry contradictions that no summary can hold. Tate is defending art’s right to be structured without being reducible, to be coherent without being merely rational. Form becomes the compromise between chaos and clarity: not logic, but a hard-won order that keeps the experience alive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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