"At the San Francisco Airport," by Yvor Winters

"At the San Francisco Airport," by Yvor Winters

Arthur Yvor Winters was born in Chicago in 1900, but grew up in Eagle Rock, California, near Pasadena. From 1917 to 1918 he attended the University of Chicago, however, at the end of his fall quarter in 1918 he was forced to stay at a sanatorium in New Mexico after discovering he had tuberculosis. Due to his forced isolation and bed-rest, he was able to immerse himself in contemporary poetry by reading little magazines and books of poetry. He later participated in the major poetic and critical movements of the 20th century, for example imagism, the expatriate transition scene, and new criticism. Winters became well known in the 1920s for his poetry, as a strong moralistic critic in the 1930s, and after being a professor of English at Stanford University, as an advocate for neglected poets. (information from the Poetry Foundation)

To my daughter, 1954

This is the terminal: the light

Gives perfect vision, false and hard;

The metal glitters, deep and bright.

Great planes are waiting in the yard—

They are already in the night.

And you are here beside me, small,

Contained and fragile, and intent

On things that I but half recall—

Yet going whither you are bent.

I am the past, and that is all.

But you and I in part are one:

The frightened brain, the nervous will,

The knowledge of what must be done,

The passion to acquire the skill

To face that which you dare not shun.

The rain of matter upon sense

Destroys me momently. The score:

There comes what will come. The expense

Is what one thought, and something more—

One’s being and intelligence.

This is the terminal, the break.

Beyond this point, on lines of air,

You take the way that you must take;

And I remain in light and stare—

In light, and nothing else, awake.

We commonly associate airports with two things: coming home or leaving for a journey. “At the San Francisco Airport” discusses the painful separation between a father (possibly Winters himself) and a daughter as she prepares to leave home. In the first line of this poem Winters provides us with the words, “This is the terminal.” The ambiguity of this phrase provides us with various meanings; not only does it denote the area in which she will be boarding the plane, but it also implies an ending to their time together. The father describes his daughter next to him as “small /Contained and fragile.” Although she is independent and ready to leave, he still sees her (as many fathers do) as his innocent little girl in need of constant protection. The sadness or the emptiness we feel when we lose someone we’re close to is expressed through the father’s dejected statement, “I am in the past and that is all.” However, he is comforted in the fact that the two of them “are in part one;”  “frightened” and “nervous” of the future, yet having “knowledge of what must be done, [and] the passion to acquire the skill.” 

  Instead of a simple “goodbye” or “see you soon,” Winters repeats, “This is the terminal, the break.” These words imply that this separation is permanent, that their relationship will never be what it once was. By analyzing the connotations of words such as “terminal,” “the break,” and “beyond,” the poem can take a more melancholy turn. The father could possibly be at the end of his life, afraid to leave his daughter alone as he “remain[s] in the light and stare[s].”