Belief is blind! Bees scream!

I get a metaphysical headache every time I read Yvor Winters. How could anyone not when he constantly writes stuff like this (from Demigod):

I stand here

raging

my brain beaten

 

white with thudding

blood o

anvil of the gods

Aaaaargh! Or:

To be my own Messiah to the

burning end. Can one endure the

acrid steeping darkness of

the brain, which glitters and is

dissipated? Night, the night is

winter

from The Rows of Cold Trees. I mean, why don’t we all go and spend a long cold time finding huge iron wrenches and clang on frozen lead pipes with them, for fun, like all weekend?! No idea why I have to keep coming back to this stuff. But then he writes stuff like this Song — and you want to walk up to him and say: Give me your life for a week, or take mine. Please.

Song

by Yvor Winters

Where I walk out

to meet you on the

cloth of burning

fields

 

the goldfinches

leap up about my

feet like angry

dandelions

 

quiver like a

heartbeat in the

air and are

no more

Yvor Winters, I read, deprecated emotionality and advocated the application of “rational thought and judgment” to experiences that are the subject of poems. True. No flashing eyes and floating hair on him. And such application – such balance - was a moral imperative for him. Yeek.  Maybe that explains the headaches. 

About these ads