Arthur Yvor Winters (October 17, 1900 – January 25, 1968) was an American poet and literary critic.

Life

Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived there until 1919 except for brief stays in Seattle and Pasadena, where his grandparents lived. He attended the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

for four-quarters in 1917–18, where he was a member of a literary circle that included Glenway Wescott, Elizabeth Madox Roberts and his future wife Janet Lewis. In the winter of 1918–19 he was diagnosed with

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

and underwent treatment for two years in

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , literal translation, lit. "Holy Faith") is the capital city, capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Santa Fe County. With over 89,000 residents, Santa Fe is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, fourt ...

. During his recuperation he wrote and published some of his early poems. On his release from the sanitarium he taught in high schools in nearby mining towns. In 1923 Winters published one of his first critical essays, "Notes on the Mechanics of the Poetic Image," in the expatriate literary journal ''

Secession Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a Polity, political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal i ...

''. That same year he enrolled at the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the U ...

, where he achieved his BA and MA degrees in 1925. In 1926, Winters married the poet and novelist Janet Lewis, also from Chicago and a fellow tuberculosis sufferer. After leaving Colorado he taught at the

University of Idaho The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho, United States. Established in 1889 and opened three years later, it was the state's sole university for 71 years, until 1963. The un ...

and then began the doctoral program at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. He remained at Stanford after receiving his PhD in 1934, becoming a member of the English faculty and living in Los AltosLos Altos History Museum.
The Shoup Centennial 1910–2010
. Los Altos History Museum, 2010. Retrieved October 9, 2011. for the rest of his life. He retired from his Stanford position in 1966, two years before his death from throat cancer. His students included the poets Edgar Bowers, Turner Cassity,

Thom Gunn Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with Movement (literature), The Movement, and his later poetry in America, where he adop ...

, Donald Hall, Philip Levine, Jim McMichael,

N. Scott Momaday Navarre Scotte Momaday (February 27, 1934–January 24, 2024) was a Kiowa and American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His novel ''House Made of Dawn'' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969 in literature, 1969, and ...

, Robert Pinsky, John Matthias, Moore Moran, Roger Dickinson-Brown and Robert Hass, the critic Gerald Graff, and the theater director and writer Herbert Blau. He was also a mentor to Donald Justice, J.V. Cunningham, and Bunichi Kagawa. He edited the literary magazine ''Gyroscope'' with his wife from 1929 to 1931; and '' Hound & Horn'' from 1932 to 1934. He was awarded the 1961 Bollingen Prize for Poetry for his ''Collected Poems''.

As modernist

Winters's early poetry appeared in small avant-garde magazines alongside work by writers like

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

and Gertrude Stein and was written in the

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

idiom; it was heavily influenced both by Native American poetry and by

Imagism Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism has been termed "a successi ...

, being described as 'arriving late at the Imagist feast'.Schmidt, Michael, Lives of Poets, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1999 His essay "The Testament of a Stone" gives an account of his poetics during this early period. Although beginning his career as an admirer and imitator of the

Imagist Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized literary modernism, modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism has bee ...

poets, Winters by the end of the 1920s had formulated a neo-classic poetics. Around 1930, he turned away from modernism and developed an Augustan style of writing, notable for its clarity of statement and its formality of rhyme and rhythm, with most of his poetry thereafter being in the accentual- syllabic form.

As critic

Winters's critical style was comparable to that of F. R. Leavis, and in the same way he created a school of students (of mixed loyalty). His affiliations and proposed canon, however, were quite different:

Edith Wharton Edith Newbold Wharton (; ; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray, realistically, the lives and morals of the Gil ...

's The Age of Innocence above any one novel by

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

, Robert Bridges above T. S. Eliot, Charles Churchill above

Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early ...

, Fulke Greville and George Gascoigne above Sidney and Spenser. In his view, "a poem in the first place should offer us a new perception . . . bringing into being a new experience."''Primitivism and Decadence: A Study of American Experimental Poetry'' Arrow Editions, New York, 1937 He attacked

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

, particularly in its American manifestations, and assailed Emerson's reputation as that of a sacred cow. His first book of poems, ''Diadems and Fagots,'' takes its title from one of Emerson's poems. In this he was probably influenced by

Irving Babbitt Irving Babbitt (August 2, 1865 – July 15, 1933) was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative tho ...

. Winters was associated with the

New Criticism New Criticism was a Formalism (literature), formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of l ...

. Winters is best known for his argument attacking the "fallacy of imitative form": :"To say that a poet is justified in employing a disintegrating form in order to express a feeling of disintegration, is merely a sophistical justification for bad poetry, akin to the Whitmanian notion that one must write loose and sprawling poetry to 'express' the loose and sprawling American continent. In fact, all feeling, if one gives oneself (that is, one's form) up to it, is a way of disintegration; poetic form is by definition a means to arrest the disintegration and order the feeling; and in so far as any poetry tends toward the formless, it fails to be expressive of anything."

Bibliography

*''Diadems and Fagots'' (1921) poems *''The Immobile Wind'' (1921) poems *''The Magpie's Shadow'' (1922) poems *''Notes on the Mechanics of the Image'' (1923) in Secession magazine *''The Bare Hills'' (1927) poems *''The Proof'' (1930) poems *''The Journey and Other Poems'' (1931) poems *''Before Disaster'' (1934) poems *''Primitivism and Decadence: A Study of American Experimental Poetry'' Arrow Editions, New York, 1937 *''Maule's Curse: Seven Studies in the History of American Obscurantism'' (1938) *''Poems'' (1940) *''The Giant Weapon'' (1943) poems *''The Anatomy of Nonsense'' (1943) *''Edwin Arlington Robinson'' (1946) *'' In Defense of Reason'' (1947) collects Primitivism, Maule and Anatomy *''To the Holy Spirit'' (1947) poems *''Three Poems'' (1950) *''Collected Poems'' (1952, revised 1960) *''The Function of Criticism: Problems and Exercises'' (1957) *''On Modern Poets: Stevens, Eliot, Ransom, Crane, Hopkins, Frost'' (1959) *''The Early Poems of Yvor Winters'', 1920–1928 (1966) *''Forms of Discovery: Critical and Historical Essays on the Forms of the Short Poem in English'' (1967) *''Uncollected Essays and Reviews'' (1976) *''The Collected Poems of Yvor Winters''; with an introduction by Donald Davie (1978) *''Uncollected Poems'' 1919–1928 (1997) *''Uncollected Poems'' 1929–1957 (1997) *''Yvor Winters: Selected Poems'' (2003) edited by

As editor *''Twelve Poets of the Pacific'' (1937) *''Selected Poems'', by Elizabeth Daryush (1948); with a foreword by Winters *''Poets of the Pacific, Second Series'' (1949) *''Quest for Reality: An Anthology of Short Poems in English'' (1969); with, and with an introduction by, Kenneth Fields

References

External links

''Yvor Winters: The American Literary Rhadamanthus'' (an Yvor Winters blog)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Winters, Yvor 1900 births 1968 deaths 20th-century American poets American literary critics Bollingen Prize recipients Formalist poets Stanford University faculty University of Chicago alumni University of Colorado Boulder alumni University of Idaho faculty Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area American male poets Poets from Chicago 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters