American poet, critic, and teacher who held that literature should be evaluated for its moral and intellectual content as well as on aesthetic grounds.

Educated at the University of Chicago, University of Colorado (Boulder), and Stanford University (California), Winters taught at the University of Idaho (Pocatello) and at Stanford (1927–66). His attacks on such contemporary literary idols as T.S. Eliot and Henry James aroused much controversy. His collected poems appeared in 1952 (rev. ed., 1960). His major critical works, Primitivism and Decadence, Maule's Curse, and The Anatomy of Nonsense, were collected as In Defense of Reason (1947; rev. ed., 1960). Forms of Discovery: Critical and Historical Essays on the Forms of the Short Poem appeared in 1967.