Yvor Winters: Selected Poems

by Winters, Yvor

• ISBN13: 9781931082501
• ISBN10: 1931082502
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Penguin Group USA

Summary

As critic and teacher, Yvor Winters was one of the most controversial and influential figures of his time. He criticized the likes of Eliot and Henry James, was called by the chair of his English department "a disgrace," and taught such major poets as Robert Pinsky and Philip Levine. As a poet, he created a moving body of work featuring natural and personal subjects and dramatic formal experiments. The American Poets Project presents the largest collection of his work ever published. Selected by celebrated poet Thom Gunn, a friend and former student of Winters, this volume begins with early free verse and culminates in late meditative neoclassical masterpieces.

Author Biography

Thom Gunn, editor, was a senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and is the author of Collected Poems (1994) and Shelf Life (1993).

Table of Contents

Introduction	xvii
from The Early Poems of Yvor Winters, 1920-28 (1966)
Two Songs of Advent	1	(1)
One Ran Before	1	(1)
Song for a Small Boy Who Herds Goats	2	(1)
Alone	3	(1)
The Magpie's Shadow
I. In Winter
Myself	4	(1)
Still Morning	4	(1)
Awakening	4	(1)
Winter Echo	4	(1)
The Hunter	4	(1)
No Being	4	(1)
II. In Spring
Spring	5	(1)
May	5	(1)
Spring Rain	5	(1)
Song	5	(1)
III. In Summer and Autumn
Sunrise	5	(1)
Fields	5	(1)
At Evening	5	(1)
Cool Nights	6	(1)
Sleep	6	(1)
The Aspen's Song	6	(1)
The Walker	6	(1)
Blue Mountain	6	(1)
God of Roads	6	(1)
September	6	(1)
A Lady	6	(1)
Alone	7	(1)
A Deer	7	(1)
Man in Desert	7	(1)
Desert	7	(1)
The End	7	(1)
High Valleys	7	(1)
Awaiting Snow	7
The Bare Hills
I. Upper River Country, Rio Grande
I. Hill Burial	8	(1)
II. The Precincts of February	8	(1)
III. The Resurrection	9	(1)
IV. Tewa Spring	10	(1)
V. Dark Spring	10	(1)
VI. The Crystal Sun	11	(2)
VII. José's Country	13	(1)
VIII. The Upper Meadows	14	(1)
IX. The Moonlight	14	(1)
X. October	15	(1)
XI. The Impalpable Void	16	(1)
XII. "The Fragile Season"	16	(1)
II. The Bare Hills
I. Genesis	17	(1)
II. Exodus	17	(1)
III. The Vigil	18	(1)
IV. Moonrise	18	(1)
V. Alba for Hecate	18	(1)
I. The Cold	19	(1)
II. Digue dondaine, digue dondon	20	(1)
III. Nocturne	21	(1)
IV. "Quod Tegit Omnia"	22	(1)
I. March Dusk	23	(1)
II. The Lamplight	24
III. Flesh of Flowers	23	(3)
IV. Under Rain	26	(1)
V. Midnight Wind	26	(1)
I. Complaint	27	(1)
II. The Muezzin	28	(1)
III. Song	29	(1)
IV.April	29	(1)
V. Song	30	(1)
I. Full Moon	31	(1)
II. Love Song	31	(1)
III. Sleep	31	(1)
I. The Cold Room	31	(1)
II. The Bare Hills	32	(1)
III. The Dead: Mazda Wake	33	(1)
IV. The Barnyard	33	(1)
V. The Grosbeaks	34	(1)
I. The Streets	35	(1)
II. The Rows of Cold Trees	36	(2)
III. Prayer beside a Lamp	38	(1)
IV. Man Regards Eternity in Aging	39	(1)
III. The Passing Night
I. Eternity	40	(1)
II. The Passing Night	41	(1)
The Solitude of Glass	42	(1)
Fire Sequence
1. Coal: Beginning and End	43	(1)
2. Liberation	43	(1)
3. Return of Spring	44	(1)
4. Bill	45	(1)
5. The Vanquished	46	(1)
6. The Victor	47	(1)
7. A Miner	48	(1)
8. Vacant Lot	49	(1)
9. Tragic Love	49	(1)
10. To the Crucified	50	(1)
11. O Sun!	51	(1)
12. November	52	(1)
13. Genesis	53	(1)
14. The Bitter Moon	54	(1)
15. The Deep: A Service for All the Dead	55	(2)
Orange Tree	57	(1)
Song of the Trees	57	(1)
The Goatherds	58	(1)
Bison	59	(1)
Wild Sunflower	60	(1)
Snow-Ghost	61	(1)
The Vigil	62	(1)
Simplex Munditiis	63	(1)
from Collected Poems (1960)
The Moralists	64	(1)
The Realization	64	(1)
To William Dinsmore Briggs Conducting His Seminar	65	(1)
The Invaders	66	(1)
The Castle of Thorns	66	(1)
Apollo and Daphne	67	(1)
The Fable	67	(1)
The Empty Hills	68	(1)
Moonrise	69	(1)
The Fall of Leaves	70	(1)
Inscription for a Graveyard	70	(1)
The Last Visit	71	(1)
For Howard Baker	72	(1)
The Slow Pacific Swell	72	(2)
The Marriage	74	(1)
On a View of Pasadena from the Hills	75	(3)
The Journey	78	(2)
A Vision	80	(2)
To a Young Writer	82	(1)
By the Road to the Air-Base	83	(1)
Elegy on a Young Airedale Bitch Lost Some Years Since in the Salt-Marsh	84	(1)
Midas	84	(1)
Sonnet to the Moon	85	(1)
The Anniversary	86	(1)
Before Disaster	86	(1)
The Prince	87	(1)
Phasellus Ille	88	(1)
Orpheus	88	(1)
On the Death of Senator Thomas J. Walsh	89	(1)
Dedication for a Book of Criticism	90	(1)
A Leave-Taking	91	(1)
On Teaching the Young	91	(1)
Chiron	91	(1)
Heracles	92	(2)
Alcmena	94	(1)
Theseus: A Trilogy	95	(4)
Socrates	99	(2)
To Edwin V. McKenzie	101	(1)
To a Woman on Her Defense of Her Brother Unjustly Convicted of Murder	102	(1)
To David Lamson	103	(1)
John Day, Frontiersman	104	(1)
John Sutter	105	(1)
The California Oaks	106	(2)
On Rereading a Passage from John Muir	108	(1)
The Manzanita	109	(1)
Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight	109	(2)
An October Nocturne	111	(1)
A Spring Serpent	112	(1)
Much in Little	112	(1)
The Cremation	113	(1)
An Elegy	114	(1)
Time and the Garden	115	(1)
To a Portrait of Melville in My Library	116	(1)
A Prayer for My Son	117	(1)
In Praise of California Wines	118	(1)
A Summer Commentary	119	(1)
On the Portrait of a Scholar of the Italian Renaissance	120	(1)
A Dedication in Postscript	120	(1)
A Winter Evening	121	(1)
Summer Noon: 1941	122	(1)
To a Military Rifle 1942	122	(2)
For the Opening of the William Dinsmore Briggs Room	124	(1)
Moonlight Alert	124	(1)
Defense of Empire	125	(1)
Night of Battle	126	(1)
An Ode on the Despoilers of Learning in an American University, 1947	126	(2)
To Herman Melville in 1951	128	(1)
To the Holy Spirit	128	(2)
A Fragment	130	(1)
A Song in Passing	130	(1)
To the Moon	131	(1)
At the San Francisco Airport	131	(2)
Two Old-Fashioned Songs	133	(2)
from Collected Poems (1978)
To Herbert Dean Meritt	135	(1)
Uncollected Poems
"Aere Caliginoso"	136	(1)
A White Spiritual	137	(1)
The Brink of Darkness	138	(17)
Biographical Note	155	(2)
Note on the Texts	157	(2)
Notes	159	(3)
Index of Titles and First Lines	162