SOURCE: Squires, Radcliffe. “Will and Vision: Allen Tate's Terza Rima Poems.” The Sewanee Review 78, no. 4 (autumn 1970): 543-62.

In the following essay, Squires explores the significance of three of Tate's poems: “The Maimed Man,” “The Swimmers,” and “The Buried Lake.”

It may well turn out that of Allen Tate's poems those which will claim the greatest attention are those that today are the least read. These include two poems written in 1952, “The Maimed Man” and “The Swimmers”, and one poem written in 1953, “The Buried Lake”. They must be approached from several different directions: first, as logical developments in Tate's poetry as poetry; second, as logical developments in Tate's thought; third, as a logical break on Tate's part with certain aspects of T. S. Eliot's poetry.

The suggestion behind the phrase “logical developments in Tate's poetry as poetry” is that a writer's poetry possesses a life of its own. It...