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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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“This is a top-notch production.”
  • 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.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
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“To Dorothy” and “The Self and the Mulberry”
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