Poetry has often been considered an irrational genre, more
expressive than logical, more meditative than given to coherent
argument. And yet, in each of the four very different poets she
considers here, Helen Vendler reveals a style of thinking in
operation; although they may prefer different means, she argues,
all poets of any value are thinkers.
The four poets taken up in this volume--Alexander Pope, Walt
Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and William Butler Yeats--come from three
centuries and three nations, and their styles of thinking are
characteristically idiosyncratic. Vendler shows us Pope performing
as a satiric miniaturizer, remaking in verse the form of the essay,
Whitman writing as a poet of repetitive insistence for whom
thinking must be followed by rethinking, Dickinson experimenting
with plot to characterize life's unfolding, and Yeats thinking in
images, using montage in lieu of argument.
With customary lucidity and spirit, Vendler traces through
these poets' lines to find evidence of thought in lyric, the silent
stylistic measures representing changes of mind, the condensed
power of poetic thinking. Her work argues against the reduction of
poetry to its (frequently well-worn) themes and demonstrates,
instead, that there is always in admirable poetry a strenuous
process of thinking, evident in an evolving style--however ancient
the theme--that is powerful and original.
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