Synopses & Reviews
< p=""> < a="" href="http:" athome.harvard.edu/dh/vendler.html="" target="new"> 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.<> <> < p=""> 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. <>
Review
Vendler is essential, whether one delights or despairs in her views. More, The Music of What Happensis the essential Vendler. -- L L. Cornell - Pacific Affairs
Review
The Music of What Happens,with its deft, precise treatment of the configurative strategies of Ashbery, Heaney, Ginsberg, Sexton, and others reminds us why, ultimately, we might put the newspaper down and read a poem instead. -- Charles Tomlinson - Times Literary Supplement
Review
Polite, decisive, and insightful, Vendler is our most distinguished critic of modern poetry. In this collection she deals with writers as diverse as Donald Davie and A. R. Ammons...It is her own likes and dislikes, tirelessly examined and cross-examined, that give her frequent bursts of critical eloquence the foundation of truth. -- Robert Lindsey, - Bloomsbury Review
Review
Any criticism that develops so complex a sense of what really good poetry does, and develops it so lovingly, is to be cherished. -- G. E. Murray - Chicago Tribune
Review
Vendler's is an ample book...and will give us enough to go on digesting and arguing about, approving and resisting, for a long time yet. -- Alan Williamson - Boston Globe
Synopsis
Join Professor Helen Vendler in her course lecture on the Yeats poem "Among School Children". View her insightful and passionateanalysis along with a condensed reading and student comments on the course.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Helen Vendler is A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University.
Harvard University
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: On Criticism
1. The Function of Criticism
2. Looking for Poetry in America
3. Critical Models: On Geoffrey Hartman
4. Defensive Harmonies: On Harold Bloom
5. The Medley Is the Message: On Roland Barthes
6. The Hunting of Wallace Stevens: Critical Approaches
Part II: On Poetry
7. Lionel Trilling and Wordsworth's Immortality Ode
8. Keats and the Use of Poetry
9. Reading Walt Whitman
Part III: On Poets
10. Seamus Heaney
11. Stephen Spender: Journals and Poems
12. Donald Davie: Self-Portraits in Verse
13. Ted Hughes
14. Czeslaw Milosz
15. John Ashbery, Louise Glück
16. Allen Ginsberg
17. Sylvia Plath
18. Elizabeth Bishop
19. Anne Sexton
20. A. R. Ammons: Dwelling in the Flow of Shapes
Part IV: Recent Writing
21. James Merrill
22. Adrienne Rich, Jared Carter, Philip Levine
23. Charles Wright
24. Amy Clampitt
25. Dave Smith
26. Frank Bidart
27. Michael Blumenthal
28. Louise Glück, Stephen Dunn, Brad Leithauser,