Best 12 quotes of Yvor Winters on MyQuotes

And one rose in a tent of sea and gave A darkening shudder; water fell away; The whale stood shining, and then sank in spray.

By practice and conviction formed, With ancient stubbornness ingrained, Although her body clung and swarmed, My own identity remained.

Even though poetry was written for the 'minds ear' as well as the physical ear, the minds ear can be trained only by the other ... which comes back to reading poetry aloud.

Far out of sight forever stands the sea, Bounding the land with pale tranquillity.

Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education

Reptilian green the wrinkled throat, Green as a bough of yew the beard; He bent his head, and so I smote

The land is numb. It stands beneath the feet, and one may come Walking securely, till the sea extends Its limber margin, and precision ends.

The passion to condense from book to book Unbroken wisdom in a single look, Though we know well that when this fix the head, The mind's immortal, but the man is dead.

The poet's first job of work is to put bread on the table.

The rain of matter upon sense Destroys me momently. The score: There comes what will come.

What I desire of a poem is a clear understanding of motive, and a just evaluation of feeling A poem in the first place should offer us a new perception..bringing into being a new experience Verse is more valuable than prose for its rhythms are faster and more highly organised and lead to greater compexity.

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.