Yvor Winters

Yvor Winters was born in Chicago on October 17, 1900 ("Yvor Winters"). He grew up in California and Oregon, but when he was a teenager he moved back to Illinois and eventually became a student at the University of Chicago. However, after his first year of college he was forced to move to New Mexico in order to recover from a bout of tuberculosis. While in New Mexico, he worked as a teacher in the schools of two coal mining towns. During this time he also published his first book of poems, all of which were written in free verse. After a few years, Winters enrolled at the University of Colorado in order to obtain an M.A. in Romance languages. In 1926, soon after he graduated, he married a novelist named Janet Lewis (Brunner). Winters then became an English professor at Stanford University, where he remained for nearly forty years until 1966 (Ellmann, O'Clair, and Ramazani 661). During these years Winters stopped writing in free verse and began to write poems that contained strict meter and rhyme patterns. He died in 1968. Throughout his life, Winters was a critic as well as a poet; he was displeased with most modern American poetry, and he disliked the poetry of many of his contemporaries. However, many people admired Winters because of his strong views, and others were fascinated by his unique character traits.

Winters' poem "By the Road to the Air-Base" was published in 1934. It consists of four quatrains with an abba rhyme scheme. When I first read this poem, I thought that it was contrasting the peacefulness of nature with the violence and activity of civilization. However, upon a second reading I realized that the contrast is actually between the speaker's garden and the outside world. The speaker says that the outside world includes things such as "calloused grass" (line 1) and "sloughs of tidal slime" (line 6). He also states that "life is a grayish stain" (line 3). In the garden, on the other hand, "fruit grows on the trees" (line 13), scholars stroll along the pathways, and bees and flowers are everywhere. The last stanza is in stark contrast to the first three. The speaker feels a sense of security and peace in the man-made garden, while the outer world is depicted as being harsh and miserable.

Bibliography

Poem:

Winters, Yvor. "By the Road to the Air-Base." The Norton Antholody of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Volume 1. Eds. Ellmann, Richard, Robert O'Clair, and Jahan Ramazani. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2003. 663. Print.

Biography:

Brunner, Edward. "Yvor Winters: Biographical Note." Modern American Poetry. Oxford University Press, 1999. Web. Jan 29 2011. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/winters/bio.htm.

Ellmann, Richard, Robert O'Clair, and Jahan Ramazani. The Norton Antholody of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Volume 1. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2003. Print.

"Yvor Winters." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. Jan 29 2011. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/695.