The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Enlightening
Review: I suppose you have to know something about Yvor Winters to get something out of this book. Actually, you have to know a lot about Yvor Winters. But if you do, you're sure to enjoy it. The selection is excellent, and the presentation is very fine. The Introduction, sadly, won't help anyone new to Winters very much, even though it is well written. But I don't suppose anyone who is new to Winters is going to shell out [money] for this book anyway. Yvor was a controversial poet and critic in the first half of the 20th century. He was a formalist poet and a stern, rationalist critic. He was a brilliant, if irascible, man, an erudite writer, and lofty poet. He made plenty of literary enemies and a few friends. He has a few followers left, and they will enjoy this book immensely. I learned a great deal about Winters along the way, and I cherished the opportunity to learn it about so great a thinker and writer. And I read him in an epistolary tone of voice I knew he had but never had the joy of reading. Every page was another one to savor. Particularly fun were the early letters, up till about 1940, in which Yvor was much more voluble than I ever thought he could have been. He became an embittered old coot by the end of his days, and it was sad to see, though I enjoyed every letter nonetheless. Thanks to Bob Barth for the effort put in bringing this to print. It is an especially handsome book about one of our greatest thinkers, who has been lost in obscurity for far too long.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Enlightening
Review: I suppose you have to know something about Yvor Winters to get something out of this book. Actually, you have to know a lot about Yvor Winters. But if you do, you're sure to enjoy it. The selection is excellent, and the presentation is very fine. The Introduction, sadly, won't help anyone new to Winters very much, even though it is well written. But I don't suppose anyone who is new to Winters is going to shell out [money] for this book anyway. Yvor was a controversial poet and critic in the first half of the 20th century. He was a formalist poet and a stern, rationalist critic. He was a brilliant, if irascible, man, an erudite writer, and lofty poet. He made plenty of literary enemies and a few friends. He has a few followers left, and they will enjoy this book immensely. I learned a great deal about Winters along the way, and I cherished the opportunity to learn it about so great a thinker and writer. And I read him in an epistolary tone of voice I knew he had but never had the joy of reading. Every page was another one to savor. Particularly fun were the early letters, up till about 1940, in which Yvor was much more voluble than I ever thought he could have been. He became an embittered old coot by the end of his days, and it was sad to see, though I enjoyed every letter nonetheless. Thanks to Bob Barth for the effort put in bringing this to print. It is an especially handsome book about one of our greatest thinkers, who has been lost in obscurity for far too long.