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Loading... Collected Poemsby Yvor Winters
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)811.5Literature English (North America) American poetry 20th CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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In my "second reading" (again not of all poems in the collection, but re-reading many from the first reading) I warmed to Winters and the sense of the book overall, as opposed to individual poems. I still had no firm sense of purpose, but I began to pick up on an abiding interest in stillness: in nature, in relationship. In this reading, I remarked specifically the poem "The Vision", it was odd in its subject matter (a dream of encountering a decapitated head), but wasn't a novelty or a jarring departure from other poems in the collection.
Thereafter, I dipped in multiple times: new poems, re-reads of poems from the first two readings. Usually I found Winters uneven, within the same poem identifying really strong and then really awkward portions. I spent some time reading about Winters and his place in contemporary American poetry, both at the Poetry Foundation and a New Yorker essay. After a prolonged read of perhaps the final quarter or third of the collection, I reflected I had a a strong impression I "got" what Winters was after in the poems collected here. That reading somehow suggested the classic concern of Spirit and Matter, or actual life along with the importance of abstract principles, and that Winters in his verse was grappling with what abstractions are, putting into as clear terms as possible what these meant for living, how they inform 'immortality' or a legacy left after one's death via culture, learning, and values passed on.
Much remains obscure to me, I still do not feel as confident or clear in reading verse compared to reading fiction or essays or non-fiction. But reading Winters' Collected Poems feels like a milepost in my efforts at understanding verse and the poetic tradition.
I had grown away from youth,
Shedding error where I could;
I was now essential wood,
Concentrating into truth;
What I did was small but good.
-- A Dream Vision ( )