Yvor Winters (1900–1968)

What began with no expectations ended up a benchmark experience in reading poetry. Opening the book, I'd never heard of Winters: the book was a gift. In what I now think of as my "first reading" (not all poems, perhaps half the collection), my overall impression was that Winters tried too hard -- not with every poem, only in specific places, though the impression of those specific places was pronounced. Other poems or lines seemed to work very well at evoking an image or a feeling, even as I failed to apprehend an overarching purpose. At the end of this reading session, I realised I could not state what I thought Winters was like, could not characterise his poetry in any specific way, and thought I should read more and try to develop a clearer sense of what I thought.

In my "second reading" (again not of all poems in the collection, but re-reading many from the first reading) I warmed to Winters and the sense of the book overall, as opposed to individual poems. I still had no firm sense of purpose, but I began to pick up on an abiding interest in stillness: in nature, in relationship. In this reading, I remarked specifically the poem "The Vision", it was odd in its subject matter (a dream of encountering a decapitated head), but wasn't a novelty or a jarring departure from other poems in the collection.

Thereafter, I dipped in multiple times: new poems, re-reads of poems from the first two readings. Usually I found Winters uneven, within the same poem identifying really strong and then really awkward portions. I spent some time reading about Winters and his place in contemporary American poetry, both at the Poetry Foundation and a New Yorker essay. After a prolonged read of perhaps the final quarter or third of the collection, I reflected I had a a strong impression I "got" what Winters was after in the poems collected here. That reading somehow suggested the classic concern of Spirit and Matter, or actual life along with the importance of abstract principles, and that Winters in his verse was grappling with what abstractions are, putting into as clear terms as possible what these meant for living, how they inform 'immortality' or a legacy left after one's death via culture, learning, and values passed on.

Much remains obscure to me, I still do not feel as confident or clear in reading verse compared to reading fiction or essays or non-fiction. But reading Winters' Collected Poems feels like a milepost in my efforts at understanding verse and the poetic tradition.

I had grown away from youth,
Shedding error where I could;
I was now essential wood,
Concentrating into truth;
What I did was small but good.

-- A Dream Vision… (meer)

Yvor Winters was a beloved teacher and a minor poet whose criticism has a reputation for idiosyncrasy. In this book he savagely attacks T. S. Eliot, Hopkins, and Frost. He is less negative on Crane and Stevens; he has an ongoing critical war with Ransom. While some of this is daring to speak of the "elephant in the room", speaking of the aspects of some of these great poets' styles that have, perhaps, made others of us uncomfortable, but that are general not spoken of, much of the time one has the impression that he has such high standards and such narrow tastes, that there simply isn't much poetry he likes very much. The writing is old-fashionedly elegant, the argumentation is brilliant, the passion evident ... still, one prefers a critic who is more willing to like poems more easily and more broadly.… (meer)

Winters was loved as a teacher, and influential as a critic, which explains a continuing interest in his small body of poetic work. I was intrigued enough by these poems to read this slim volume and its critical introduction through twice. While some will find poems to admire here, I'd be surprised if many will find much to love. These are formal rather chilly poems, whether in his early Imagist period, the middle neo-Augustan poems in heroic couplets, or the finely wrought lyrics (heavily influenced by the 16th and 17th English poets) of his later work. The language is precise, hard and crystalline, but often moves almost by indirection, whether with references so specific as become hermetic, or so symbolic as to become abstract. The intensity of the expression and the clearly heavily worked surface make lapses of tone and diction seem sloppy or precious depending on you point of view.… (meer)