Customer Reviews

Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form

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The fact that Helen Vendler majored in chemistry in college and got a Fulbright Fellowship for mathematics is evident in this book.

Dense? Yes. Intimidating? That, too. But comprehensive, based on evidence, insightful, and ultimately illuminating? Very much so. Vendler is scientific and logical -- one might even say, endowed with a good dollop of common sense. She doesn't intuit a claim and force evidence to prove it; she appraises the data -- i.e. the most obvious elements of a poem, its stylistic characteristics -- and tries to explain, why? and answer, what does it do? Sometimes, the analysis and conclusion will be more convincing than others, but the efforts are never less than impressive. This is as much a book revealing the depth of Yeats's art as it is a revelation of the possibilities of lyric form and a reminder to contemporary poets that there's an amazing and often overlooked arsenal available in rhyme, meter, and other elements of poetic style.

Vendler's book is an extended application of close-reading scholarship to the poems of Yeats, with particular emphasis on the metrical structures of the poems. Lest that summary leave the impression that it is an arid technical exercise, I should stress that this fine book offers immense benefits to a potentially large readership, including: (1) anyone who enjoys Yeats and wants to deepen that appreciation, (2) students and scholars of English poetry, especially prosody, and (3) intelligent readers in general who would like to experience close reading analysis at the feet of an expert. Admirers in category (1) will come away with a new dimension to their love for Yeats. Those in category (2) may be surprised to discover how hard and how thoroughly Yeats applied himself to technical aspects of English prosody, and will probably take a new look at other poets. The book could be read in sections, and would thus easily lend itself to a supplementary role in a literature course, but I would recommend reading it all the way through. Finally, it is well-written.

I thank Helen Vendler for explaining the meaning of many familiar lines, such as these (from different poems): "That is no country for old men", "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?", and "The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun".

The new insight that Helen Vendler has regarding much analyzed Yeats poems will astound even the most studied Yeatsian.