Essays of Four Decades

In an age where criticism sounds more and more like the sigh of a dying culture, Tate reminds us of the fundamental truth's of the human condition that are revealed by a certain poetic vision which at once transcends and underscores religion, politics, literature, and poetry. He is a writer that I find myself constantly returning to not merely to gain insight into the particular works in question, but rather to remember the importance of reading literature and poetry in the first place. Tate is one of the best poet's and critics of the 20th century (very much akin to T.S. Eliot in both form and content) but due to his sympathies for the Antebellum South which is heretical in academia, and a growing infatuation with criticism that is divorced from the poetic imagination from which literature springs, Tate is less read than he should be.