Skip to content

It will be seen that what I desire of a poem is a clear understanding of motive, and a just evaluation of feeling; the justice of the evaluation persisting even into the sound of the least important syllable. Such a poem is a perfect and complete act of the spirit; it calls upon the full life of the spirit; it is difficult of attainment, but I am aware of no good reason to be contented with less.

— Yvor Winters Primitivism and Decadence : A Study of American Experimental Poetry (1937)

Another quote →

More quotes by Yvor Winters

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 Collected Poems of Yvor Winters (1960)

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

The Collected Poems of Yvor Winters (1960)

Metal, intrinsic value, deep and dense,
Preanimate, inimitable, still,
Real, but an evil with no human sense,
Dispersed the mind to concentrate the will.

The Collected Poems of Yvor Winters (1960)

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

The Collected Poems of Yvor Winters (1960)

What end impersonal, what breathless age,
Incontinent of quiet and of years,
What calm catastrophe will yet assuage
This final drouth of penitential tears?

The Collected Poems of Yvor Winters (1960)

All Yvor Winters quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Yvor Winters (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.