SOURCE: Nemerov, Howard. “The Current of the Frozen Stream.” The Sewanee Review 67, no. 4 (October 1959): 585-97.

In the following essay, which was originally published in 1948 in Furioso, Nemerov provides a stylistic examination of Tate's verse, focusing on a “major duality in his poetry.”

My occasion is the publication of Mr. Tate's collection, Poems 1922-1947 (Scribner's, 1948), my purpose the elucidation of a major duality in his poetry, which I would regard as in some sense its generating or operative principle. In some sense … those beautiful precautionary and beforehand words which serve the critic so well through all life's appointments and will make him a satisfactory epitaph; but used here with particular intent to deny that the results of this (or any such) study are conceived as historically applicable, as suggesting the origin of the poetry. I am concerned to show the design that exists in the poetry; this does not...