Comments about Yvor Winters

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TheAmScho: For this week’s Read Me a Poem, Amanda Holmes brings us “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens, which critic Yvor Winters called “the greatest American poem of the twentieth century.”

Kulambq: 'Peace to the heart that can accept this cold!' ~ Yvor Winters, 'The Castle of Thorns'

isidro_li: If I ever pleased the Muse, May she not one boon refuse; May I ages hence rehearse Darkest evil in my verse; May I state my grief and shame At the scholar's empty name: How great scholars failed to see Virtue in extremity. — Yvor Winters

aliterarybot: we have to live In a half-world, not ours nor history's —Thom Gunn, 'To Yvor Winters, 1955'

heather_nanni: “The rats run on the roof, These words come hard—- Sadder than cockcrow In a dreamless, earthen sleep. The Christ, eternal In the scented cold; my love, Her hand on the sill White, as if out of earth; And spring, the sleep of the dead.” Yvor Winters Spring 1978 by Andrew Wyeth

heather_nanni: Above Artwork: Spring, 1978 tempera on panel by Andrew Wyeth Here is the full poem, ‘Dark Spring’ by Yvor Winters…

thaliarchus: ‘To a Military Rifle, 1942’, by Yvor Winters

isidro_li: The door became a species of mystery. It opened inward or stood closed. It was the twofaced god that was able to learn nothing, save its own reversible path. — Yvor Winters

isidro_li: Who on the brown earth Knows himself one? Life is in lichens That sleep as they run. — Yvor Winters

BorisDralyuk: N. Scott Momaday is a national treasure, whose newest poems conjure up, in their dreamy way, the plain seriousness of his early teacher, Yvor Winters. There’s more air between M’s lines, of course — seen even in the spacing. “Winters was my true friend,” he writes. It shows.

chaven: Novelist/poet Janet Lewis (1899-1998), author of "The Wife of Martin Guerre," is too little known. I interviewed her long ago, at the home she had shared with her husband Yvor Winters in Los Altos, with its legendary loquat tree.

skydog811: The Fable by Yvor Winters | Poetry Foundation

jj_mcgovern: Most literature professors are genteel but mediocre; science professors are greatly intelligent but with limited education and interests. Ouch! (From Yvor Winters's In Defence of Reason, 1947)

jackie_ess: Wally doesn’t want to be a baby. If it comes to it, he’d rather not be. This sense moment he retreats to, is an an enclave. You can see how much he needs it by how much he gives up the poem, to indulge in this kind of Yvor Winters-esque attack on the bad romantic in general

archangel_radio: James M Wilson is on LA Catholic Morning to discuss "Death, Catholicism, and Yvor Winters."

PoetRegressive: I've spent enough years ripping on Emerson with the help of Brownson and Yvor Winters and other friends that it is easy to forget Emerson is actually quite good at times

poemtoday: A Song of Advent On the desert, between pale mountains, our cries: Far whispers creeping through an ancient shell. Yvor Winters

poemtoday: Two poems by Yvor Winters ....

readingrevival: .. fundamental facts that one has .. to get used to before one can write seriously: America .. our complex age .. the fact that life is tragic. Until one can face these facts more or less indifferently, one will distort and sentimentalize 9/10 of what one touches - Yvor Winters

247Catholic: Stay Awake: Death, Catholicism, and Yvor Winters

cworldreport: Although not a Catholic, the poet and critic Winters held that the intellectual and moral life must entail the practice of open-ended contemplation. That practice entailed meditating on our own finitude, our mortality, and the event of our death.

mabrumley: Stay Awake: Death, Catholicism, and Yvor Winters -

JMWSPT: For those who'd like a little Yvor Winters background:

JMWSPT: Every couple years I have to write something about Yvor Winters, or my heart breaks. Stay Awake: Death, Catholicism, and Yvor Winters -

JoshHochschild: “We sometimes forget that the [20th C] revival of Aquinas’s thought… extended so far beyond the Church… included non-Catholics such as Winters or those, such as Mortimer Adler, who only entered the Church long after they had become professing Thomists.”

isidro_li: Naming old graves, are stones Pushed here and there, the seat Of nothing, and the bones Beneath are similar: Relics of lonely men, Brutal and aimless, then, As now, irregular. — Yvor Winters

twinkfantasy: yvor winters, "the magpie's shadow"

aliner: Yvor Winters, "The Solitude of Glass" ... for the "Gathered to The adamant".

sophielepieuvre: Some point to it as a flaw in the system, proof that the popular method for choosing a book is shoddy; others blame that cute blue edition or a strained line of tribute from Ashbery or Lowell; even the Goodreads lit-bankers are stumped: why are people still reading Yvor Winters?

Book_Addict: Happy birthday to writer and poet Yvor Winters (October 17,1900), author of “The Anatomy of Nonsense” (1943) and many other notable works.

chaven: "The poet's first job of work is to put bread on the table."— Yvor Winters, born on this date in 1900

DeadPoetsDaily: The Solitude of Glass on Dead Poets Daily

bob_lycanthrope: ON THE ART OF CHILDISHNESS:

POETSorg: September Faint gold! O think not here. —Yvor Winters

nikkimwalls: Yvor Winters had some opinions about sunflowers.

readingrevival: i should never be so rash as to attempt to defend logically in public an absolute belief in existence, especially in a universe containing yourself. -- yvor winters to allen tate

MikeyDavidAngel: Yvor Winters true to his name railed against warmth and passion his whole existence.

1974Mnil: this reminds me of the poetry of Yvor Winters, an exceptional poet who lived in Northern California most of his life.

isidro_li: Momentum bends Earth unto fiery ends. In the shining desert still We must bend us to our will. Crane is dead at sea. The year Dwindles to a purer fear. — Yvor Winters

rk70534: LAULU Yvor Winters(1902-1968)

chrishawtree: I am enjoying Thom Gunn's letters though with a suspicion that he was the original uncle at a wedding. I find I prefer to all the on-trend references such things as his urging the early poetry of Yvor Winters.

dodgemyeyes: The Counter-Tradition (Robert Bridges, Thom Gunn, F. T. Prince, Yvor Winters)

POETSorg: At Evening Like leaves my feet passed by. Cool Nights At night bare feet on flowers! Sleep Like winds my eyelids close. —Yvor Winters

BurlHorniachek: 1/ This essay on Yvor Winters articulates many of the reasons why I have mostly stayed away from reading him so far.

poemtoday: The Far Voice Roads lie in dust – White, curling far away; And summer comes. Yvor Winters

poemtoday: Yvor Winters and Norman Dubie ...

lvstories: Too much Yvor Winters in my timeline

poemtoday: Some brief poems for lovers of Yvor Winters here:-

hyperglobalist2: failure to cite properly. an incident from literary history. john williams vs. yvor winters.

deannamascle: The Moonlight by Yvor Winters - Poems | Academy of American Poets

djcontraption: A train droning out of thought— The mind on moonlight And on trains. Blind as a thread of water Stirring through a cold like dust, Lonely beyond all silence And humming this to children, The nostalgic listeners in sleep... fr—The Moonlight Yvor Winters

aboredlittleboy: yvor winters, 'the moonlight' <3

KathaPollitt: Today's Poem-a-Day is "The Moonlight" by Yvor Winters. Rather mysterious. What do you make of it?

poemtoday: More brief poems by Yvor Winters here:-

HarthouseJames: "The Moonlight" by Yvor Winters (1900-1968) “The Moonlight” appeared in Secession no. 7 (Winter, 1924). Winters was the author of many books, including his Collected Poems (Swallow Press, 1960).

bookofjoe: "The poet moving in a world that is largely thought, so long as he regards it curiously and as a world, perceives certain specific things, as the walker in a field perceives a grassblade. These specific things are the material of the image, of art."—Yvor Winters

elysjeia: ‘‘her beauty, lithe, unholy pure’’ - yvor winters

BobNLestrange: Timeline cleanse. Yvor Winters and Janet Lewis were a great couple who supported each other.

BorisDralyuk: A side note: C.R.’s father and Elizabeth great-grandfather — he of the “monstrous nervous and physical energy” — owned a vast estate on Coconut Island in Hawaii, the “setting” of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND. Yvor Winters, ’60s sitcoms, and Theranos. That’s what I call a California story.

BorisDralyuk: Elizabeth Holmes isn’t the first member of her family with an unfortunate career in business. The story, which will take five posts to unfold, begins with the second volume of Yvor Winters’s POETS OF THE PACIFIC (1949).

matters_text: In Text Matters no 10 (2020): Alicja Piechucka’s (University of Lodz) article “Between Poetic Voice and Silence: Hart Crane, Yvor Winters, Metapoetics and Emily Dickinson’s Legacy”.

BorisDralyuk: Yesterday I drew the poems of Ann Stanford (1906-87) from my shelf, reread them with pleasure. Today I realized it was her birthday. A classically-minded Angeleno, she studied with Yvor Winters. Here is a poem he included in his 1937 anthology of Pacific poets. She was 20 then.

PoetRegressive: I did not listen to all 17 of these but this is a fun thing you should check out. You can waste time hearing me comparing California in the mature poetry of Yvor Winters with Easy Rider, but the other episodes don't feature me and are actually good

quotebread: "Metal, intrinsic value, deep and dense, Preanimate, inimitable, still, Real, but an evil with no human sense, Dispersed the mind to concentrate the will." - Yvor Winters

benlibman: The dedication to the opening of said room, by Yvor Winters

dee_bee_h: [guy in the 1950s] damn i can’t put down this new Yvor Winters book

poemtoday: Hawk’s Eyes As a gray hawk’s eyes Turn here and away So my course turns Where I walk each day. Yvor Winters

poemtoday: Two poems by Yvor Winters....

rittenhouse_at: Motivational Quote By: Yvor Winters

Book_Addict: Happy birthday to writer and poet Yvor Winters (October 17,1900), author of “The Anatomy of Nonsense” (1943) and many other notable works.

poemtoday: Some brief poems by Yvor Winters:-

conorpkelly: Some brief poems by Yvor Winters:-

plastic_bio: And you are here beside me, small,Contained and fragile, and intentOn things that I but half recall — Yet going whither you are bent. I am the past, and that is all. - Yvor Winters

JMWSPT: So, just unpacked my thirty or forty Yvor Winters books this afternoon, and want to say if you don't yet love him you will soon enough.

LAHMCCABE: Yvor Winters for a fall morning. A poem well illustrating Gunn’s statement in his introduction to Winters Selected (edited by Gunn).

Mrkalman: An October Nocturne, by Yvor Winters | Poeticous: poems, essays, and short stories

BorisDralyuk: Another calm, cool autumn evening descends on LA, and I think of “An October Nocturne” by Yvor Winters. The fierce defender of reason saw a demonic force in that perfect object devoid of human feeling, oblivious of human laws… An unlikely, uncanny Halloween poem.

POETSorg: September Faint gold! O think not here. —Yvor Winters

ForeverSaroyan: "Art, we feel, is abstract, howsoever it may be the results of concretes, of living." William Saroyan in a letter to Yvor Winters, 1931

ryanaboyd: Jeff Van Gundy interrupting the broadcast to solemnly opine on the works of Yvor Winters

poesispoesis: When I asked Janet Lewis [1899-1998] how she found time to write, raising two children & caring for a poet-husband [Yvor Winters ]-- “I put aside a few hours a day. Probably the best hours. My working time has always been when everyone went to school.”

LAHMCCABE: Fie to anyone who thinks of Yvor Winters as a cold classicist! A Prayer for My Son.

LAHMCCABE: Meanwhile in Nova Scotia. Weekly visit to the laundromat. Reading Selected Yvor Winters (Thom Gunn, ed) when a nice old man launched into a story about how he had no running water (including indoor plumbing) in his farmhouse - he said he didn't mind & neither did his girlfriends.

LAHMCCABE: One of my favourite Yvor Winters poems (about a dog of course) - and some comments by Thom Gunn.

mattpoland: His undergrad mentor was Yvor Winters, the arch-formalist, and Bill taught a class about him, Modernism, and early-modern lyric. Who else could have?! This morning I thought of Bill's warmth, his one-liners, and Winters' "At the SF Airport." So long, Bill. I love you. Thanks.

isidro_li: Earth darkens and is beaded with a sweat of bushes and the bear comes forth; the mind, stored with magnificence, proceeds into the mystery of Time, now certain of its choice of passion, but uncertain of the passion’s end. — Yvor Winters

wyattfrom_reed: saw someone recommend, as "classics of early 20th century lit" to a newcomer to poetry, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. Like bro if u had said edna st vincent or like yvor winters id have thought ur taste was bad but i wouldve at least understood. but GRAVES AND SASSOON?????

chaven: Jazz scholar Ted Gioia writes of the notorious 1933 murder case solved by an unassuming poet, Yvor Winters. The accused was the sales manager of Stanford University Press.

lhwilkinson: “What I desire of a poem is a clear understanding of motive” - Yvor Winters

tedgioia: I write about how famous Stanford poet and literary critic Yvor Winters got a man off death row by acting as a private investigator. Here's a photo of some of his crime scene analysis—amazing stuff from an English prof. You can read the whole story at

daybreakjung: His flesh, cut down, arose and grew. He bade me wait the season’s round, And then, when he had strength anew, To meet him on his native ground. - from Yvor Winters' "Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight"

LAHMCCABE: My dearest oldest poetry friend just sent me this - prompted by our email exchange about Thom Gunn. It was purchased of all places at a bookstore in Mexico, while my friend was attending Stanford and studying under Yvor Winters.

ehutchinson1513: It is pleasant and surprising to see Kirk briefly discuss the delightfully idiosyncratic Yvor Winters in his treatment of Hawthorne.

ForgottenGPoems: Here's "The Solitude of Glass," by Yvor Winters, from The Early Poems of Yvor Winters 1920-28 (1966).

isidro_li: The slow moon draws The shadows through the leaves The change it weaves Eludes design or pause. And here we wait In moon a little space, And face to face We know the hour grows late. — Yvor Winters

isidro_li: The slow moon draws The shadows through the leaves The change it weaves Eludes design or pause. And here we wait In moon a little space, And face to face We know the hour grows late. — Yvor Winters

CynthiaDNelson: AN ODE On the Despoilers of Learning In an American University 1947 ... But now the insensate, calm Performers of the hour, Cold, with cold eyes and palm, Desiring trivial power, And terror-struck within At their own emptiness, Move in –Yvor Winters

isidro_li: Earth darkens and is beaded with a sweat of bushes and the bear comes forth; the mind, stored with magnificence, proceeds into the mystery of time, now certain of its choice of passion, but uncertain of the passion’s end. — Yvor Winters

Isaac__Beach: Disappointed I can only find collections of Yvor Winters' criticism, and not his poetry. Seems like an interesting if grumpy poet.



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