Yvor Winters (1900 – 1968)
American poet and literary critic.
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What calm catastrophe will yet assuage
This final drouth of penitential tears?
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.
Metal, intrinsic value, deep and dense,
Preanimate, inimitable, still,
Real, but an evil with no human sense,
Dispersed the mind to concentrate the will.
Verse is more valuable than prose for its rhythms are faster and more highly organised and lead to greater compexity.
The rain of matter upon sense
Destroys me momently. The score:
There comes what will come.
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 ...
A poem in the first place should offer us a new perception..bringing into being a new experience
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