Back Selected Poems

Yvor Winters: Selected Poems

A selection of poems from across Winters’s career, from “Song for a Small Boy Who Herds Goats” and “The Bare Hills” to a generous selection from the 1960 volume, Collected Poems More

Edited by Thom Gunn

“It is just Winters’s brand of seriousness and his emphasis on logic and reason in poetry that contemporary verse sorely wants.”—David Yezzi, The New Criterion

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

A “maverick’s maverick,” Yvor Winters chose a poetic path that led him away from the free-verse fashions of his time to champion traditional literary form. This new selection, edited by his former student Thom Gunn, presents all of the essential poems of Winters’ idiosyncratic career, from his early Imagist experiments to his final meditative masterpieces. Rigorous, impassioned, and austere, these poems offer vivid proof that, as Gunn puts it, “The life of poetry is not just contained but is defined by its form.”

Thom Gunn (1929–2004) studied with Yvor Winters at Stanford University and was a senior lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. He published more than 30 books of poetry in the United States and Britain, including Collected Poems (1994) and Boss Cupid (2000).

About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.
Table of Contents

Introduction by Thom Gunn

from The Early Poems of Yvor Winters, 1920-28 (1966)
Two Songs of Advent
One Ran Before
Song for a Small Boy Who Herds Goats
Alone
The Magpie’s Shadow
     I. In Winter
     II. In Spring
     III. In Summer and Autumn
The Bare Hills
     I. Upper River Country: Rio Grande
     II. The Bare Hills
     III. The Passing Night
The Solitude of Glass
Fire Sequence
Orange Tree
Song of the Trees
The Goatherds
Bison
Wild Sunflower
Snow-Ghost
The Vigil
Simplex Munditiis

from Collected Poems (1960)
The Moralists
The Realization
To William Dinsmore Briggs Conducting His Seminar
The Invaders
The Castle of Thorns
Apollo and Daphne
The Fable
The Empty Hills
Moonrise
The Fall of Leaves
Inscription for a Graveyard
The Last Visit
For Howard Baker
The Slow Pacific Swell
The Marriage
On a View of Pasadena from the Hills
The Journey
A Vision
To a Young Writer
By the Road to the Air-Base
Elegy on a Young Airedale Bitch Lost Some Years Since in the Salt-Marsh
Midas
Sonnet to the Moon
The Anniversary
Before Disaster
The Prince
Phasellus Ille
Orpheus
On the Death of Senator Thomas J. Walsh
Dedication for a Book of Criticism
A Leave-Taking
On Teaching the Young
Chiron
Heracles
Alcmena
Theseus: A Trilogy
Socrates
To Edwin V. McKenzie
To a Woman on Her Defense of Her Brother Unjustly Convicted of Murder
To David Lamson
John Day, Frontiersman
John Sutter
The California Oaks
On Rereading a Passage from John Muir
The Manzanita
Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight
An October Nocturne
A Spring Serpent
Much in Little
The Cremation
An Elegy
Time and the Garden
To a Portrait of Melville in My Library
A Prayer for My Son
In Praise of California Wines
A Summer Commentary
On the Portrait of a Scholar of the Italian
Renaissance
A Dedication in Postscript
A Winter Evening
Summer Noon: 1941
To a Military Rifle 1942
For the Opening of the William Dinsmore Briggs Room
Moonlight Alert
Defense of Empire
Night of Battle
An Ode on the Despoilers of Learning in an American University, 1947
To Herman Melville in 1951
To the Holy Spirit
A Fragment
A Song in Passing
To the Moon
At the San Francisco Airport
Two Old-Fashioned Songs

from Collected Poems (1978)
To Herbert Dean Meritt

Uncollected Poems
“Aere Caliginoso”
A White Spiritual

The Brink of Darkness

Biographical Note
Note on the Texts
Notes
Index of Titles and First Lines

7.50 List Price: $20.00 (Save: 63%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #600062

ISBN: 978-1-931082-50-1 198 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

Related Books

John Berryman: Selected Poems

A. R. Ammons: Selected Poems

Muriel Rukeyser: Selected Poems

Poets of World War II

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

Yvor Winters: Selected Poems

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.