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Yvor Winters: founder of New Formalism

The American poet often took to task many poets of the literary canon

  • At the San Francisco Airport
  • To my daughter, 1954
  • This is the terminal: the light
  • Gives perfect vision, false and hard;
  • The metal glitters, deep and bright.
  • Great planes are waiting in the yard—
  • They are already in the night.
  • And you are here beside me, small,
  • Contained and fragile, and intent
  • On things that I but half recall—
  • Yet going whither you are bent.
  • I am the past, and that is all.
  • But you and I in part are one:
  • The frightened brain, the nervous will,
  • The knowledge of what must be done,
  • The passion to acquire the skill
  • To face that which you dare not shun.
  • The rain of matter upon sense
  • Destroys me momently. The score:
  • There comes what will come. The expense
  • Is what one thought, and something more—
  • One’s being and intelligence.
  • This is the terminal, the break.
  • Beyond this point, on lines of air,
  • You take the way that you must take;
  • And I remain in light and stare—
  • In light, and nothing else, awake.
  • The Fable
  • Beyond the steady rock the steady sea,
  • In movement more immovable than station,
  • Gathers and washes and is gone. It comes,
  • A slow obscure metonymy of motion,
  • Crumbling the inner barriers of the brain.
  • But the crossed rock braces the hills and makes
  • A steady quiet of the steady music,
  • Massive with peace.
  • And listen, now:
  • The foam receding down the sand silvers
  • Between the grains, thin, pure as virgin words,
  • Lending a sheen to Nothing, whispering.
  • Much in Little
  • Amid the iris and the rose,
  • The honeysuckle and the bay,
  • The wild earth for a moment goes
  • In dust or weed another way.
  • Small though its corner be, the weed
  • Will yet intrude its creeping beard;
  • The harsh blade and the hairy seed
  • Recall the brutal earth we feared.
  • And if no water touch the dust
  • In some far corner, and one dare
  • To breathe upon it, one may trust
  • The spectre on the summer air:
  • The risen dust alive with fire,
  • The fire made visible, a blur
  • Interrate, the pervasive ire
  • Of foxtail and of hoarhound burr.
Yvor Winters

Yvor Winters (1900-1968) was an American poet and critic who was perhaps better known for his criticism – which often took to task many of the accepted poets of the literary canon – than he was for his poetry. His own style began in the Modernist mode – heavily influenced by the Imagist style of presenting the image in a poem unadorned and directly to the reader, without either commentary or sentiment. In his later years, however, he developed a more staid and neo-classical style of poetry, which included a greater clarity of statement, and formal elements such as meter and rhyme. He is considered one of the founders of the New Formalism movement in poetry.

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  • At the San Francisco Airport
  • To my daughter, 1954
  • This is the terminal: the light
  • Gives perfect vision, false and hard;
  • The metal glitters, deep and bright.
  • Great planes are waiting in the yard—
  • They are already in the night.
  • And you are here beside me, small,
  • Contained and fragile, and intent
  • On things that I but half recall—
  • Yet going whither you are bent.
  • I am the past, and that is all.
  • But you and I in part are one:
  • The frightened brain, the nervous will,
  • The knowledge of what must be done,
  • The passion to acquire the skill
  • To face that which you dare not shun.
  • The rain of matter upon sense
  • Destroys me momently. The score:
  • There comes what will come. The expense
  • Is what one thought, and something more—
  • One’s being and intelligence.
  • This is the terminal, the break.
  • Beyond this point, on lines of air,
  • You take the way that you must take;
  • And I remain in light and stare—
  • In light, and nothing else, awake.
  • The Fable
  • Beyond the steady rock the steady sea,
  • In movement more immovable than station,
  • Gathers and washes and is gone. It comes,
  • A slow obscure metonymy of motion,
  • Crumbling the inner barriers of the brain.
  • But the crossed rock braces the hills and makes
  • A steady quiet of the steady music,
  • Massive with peace.
  • And listen, now:
  • The foam receding down the sand silvers
  • Between the grains, thin, pure as virgin words,
  • Lending a sheen to Nothing, whispering.
  • Much in Little
  • Amid the iris and the rose,
  • The honeysuckle and the bay,
  • The wild earth for a moment goes
  • In dust or weed another way.
  • Small though its corner be, the weed
  • Will yet intrude its creeping beard;
  • The harsh blade and the hairy seed
  • Recall the brutal earth we feared.
  • And if no water touch the dust
  • In some far corner, and one dare
  • To breathe upon it, one may trust
  • The spectre on the summer air:
  • The risen dust alive with fire,
  • The fire made visible, a blur
  • Interrate, the pervasive ire
  • Of foxtail and of hoarhound burr.
Yvor Winters

Yvor Winters (1900-1968) was an American poet and critic who was perhaps better known for his criticism – which often took to task many of the accepted poets of the literary canon – than he was for his poetry. His own style began in the Modernist mode – heavily influenced by the Imagist style of presenting the image in a poem unadorned and directly to the reader, without either commentary or sentiment. In his later years, however, he developed a more staid and neo-classical style of poetry, which included a greater clarity of statement, and formal elements such as meter and rhyme. He is considered one of the founders of the New Formalism movement in poetry.

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The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

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Submit a free classified
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