A collection of 29 solid, exploratory essays on contemporary verse
and its criticism by a Harvard' professor and poetry critic for The
New Yorker. Vendler makes it clear that she is engaged in aesthetic
criticism: describing art in relation to other art, delineating
distinctive effects and features, and seeking out the underlying
aesthetic that accounts for the differences she finds. In this
respect she gives wide berth to hermeneutic and ideological critics
who are sometimes interested solely in maneuvering a literary work
into its historical and philosophical context - approaches that, in
isolation, Vendler believes contend against the central sensuous
appeal of a work of art. Wary of the limitations of any critical
system concerned primarily with meaning or value, the author argues
for an approach that illuminates how a poem's separate parts
operate toward some end and how the poem as a whole "conducts"
itself within a tradition; she's interested, in short, in "the
music of what happens." The success of the author's approach is
evident when Vendler turns to discussion of contemporary poets
ranging from A.R. Ammons (working a "language of home" into his
verse) to Jorie Graham (with her "lofty inner vision"). In all, 26
poets are covered (including an excellent chapter on the
"difficult" John Ashberry), as well as a preliminary reconnaissance
flight over the critical vagaries of Harold Bloom, Geoffrey
Hartman, and Roland Barthes. Assured and genuinely revealing work.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Join Professor Helen Vendler in her course lecture on the Yeats
poem "Among School Children." View her insightful and passionate
analysis along with a condensed reading and student comments on the
course.
Helen Vendler has become one of our most trusted companions in
reading poetry. Among critics today she has an unrivaled ability to
show--lucidly and invitingly--just what a poem does. Insight and
wit distinguish these essays, in which Vendler elucidates the
function of criticism as well as different critical methods and
styles. Poets commented on range from Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw
Milosz to Silvia Plath, James Merrill, and Amy Clampitt.
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