Written by a preeminent critic and legendary teacher, this text and anthology presents the incisive, practical methods of reading and writing that Helen Vendler has used for decades to demystify poetry for her students and introduce them to its artistry and pleasures.
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About the Author
HELEN VENDLER, critic and scholar of English-language poetry from the seventeenth century to the present, is A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University-the first woman to hold a University Professorship, the highest academic distinction Harvard bestows. She has been poetry critic of The New Yorker since 1978, and has been a member of the Pulitzer Prize jury for poetry. Author of ground-breaking scholarly studies on George Herbert, John Keats, Wallace Stevens, William Butler Yeats, Shakespeare's sonnets, and Seamus Heaney, she won the National Book Critic's Circle Award for Criticism in 1981, and her criticism has been collected in several volumes, including Part of Nature, Part of Us, The Music of What Happens, and Soul Says.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As good as a poetry textbook could be,
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This review is from: Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology (Paperback)
There may be something ominous to potential, non-student readers in the fact that this is a "textbook". What a bizarre thing! "Text" book. How is it different from a book? Well, it's a form of book that is meant to be taken very seriously because it's "required reading" and because it may help you on some standardized test. It may help you be standardized. A textbook about poetry is perhaps an oxymoron. Is there a standardized test that quantifies stirring of the soul or soaring heart?
This is an excellent "book" book on poetry and art in general. In fact, it's one of my favorite books. As soon as I finished it, I started at the beginning again. Except for the proposed questions for discussion or homework, there are very few "textbook" concessions. There is no talking down. It is intelligent and honest from beginning to end. If you want to understand the basic elements of poetry, how it works, what it does that is different from other arts, there can be no finer work. Helen Vendler has an extraordinary ability to see clearly the basis of a poem, working back through the words, rhythms, intonations,and references to the pre-verbal experience the poet had that required expression. She has an intuitive intelligence that is oddly contagious. Sensing her remarkable ability to listen, one's own power to listen is enhanced: I too can puzzle back to the heart of this poem and the experience at its core. Our personal experience has a deep commonality. Finally, of course, it is a book about life. Poetry only exists as a communicative tool for interpreting the precious raw material of life. One says Well, I'm alive so what do I need it for? Well, because we're not alive, we're a little bit alive, brutally familiar with a very small part of life. So this being a book about great poetry addresses the great questions of life itself.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WONDERFUL BOOK!,
This review is from: Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology (Paperback)
A few quick notes: HV has put together a superb anthology/teaching tool here. She's learned and yet accessible. Includes classics and new poems.
Also includes margin notes defining odd words used by Keats and others. Full of definitions and examples for poetry terms. Comprehensive and insightful!!! Great fun to browse through or to deeply study.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not only a textbook . . .,
By Katherine (NYC & Berlin) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology (Paperback)
Ms. Vendler is by far the most exciting and intelligent poetry critic of today. Her understanding of poets, particularly of their mature works, is thorough, thrilling, and refreshingly insightful. Read anything she's written on Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Seamus Heaney, and Czeslaw Milosz and you will find, through her clarity, new reasons to fall in love with these magnificent poets. I highly recommend two other books by Ms. Vendler: Part of Nature, Part of Us & The Music of What Happens. Though I am no longer a student, I continue to read these books to shreds. She does for poetry what Ms. Ingrid Rowland does for Art History. Experience Ms. Vendler for yourself, and while you're at it, get an online subscription of NYRB and you can read all the articles she's written for this brilliant magazine.
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