Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.41 (956 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0674015673 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-11-11 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Thinking betwixt the lines: scientific rigor and received divine inspiration. Dr. Kasumu O. Salawu Arguably the most widely read poetry critic in the US today, Professor Helen Hennessey Vendler displays characteristic erudition in this work on Pope, Whitman, Dickinson and Yeats. Reviewing her book is as recursive as viewing a picture in a dream.Her arguments rescue poem making from the exclusive precinct of mythical and mystical mediums yet they do not surrender it to the uncompromising demands of logical positivists. As strongly as John Hollander craves rhyme and reason, Vendler imputes intentionality. For e. "Surprise! Poets are thinkers!" according to Martin H. Dickinson. Vendler is very entertaining--she truly holds her reader and gets us right inside the poems themselves. That's rare among today's literary critics, an almost forgotten way of thinking about poetry."Even when a poem seems to be a spontaneous outburst of feeling, it is being directed as a feat of ordered language, by something one can only call thought. Yet in most accounts of the internal substance of poetry, critics continue to emphasize the imaginative or irrational or psychological or 'expressive' base of poet. Our most eloquent poetry professor on four great English language poets I have long enjoyed and appreciated the helpful, brilliant and clear writings of Professor Vendler, opening to even my poor understanding the means and meanings of our great poets, including The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets which bears a CD of her reading of the sonnets, selected.In particular I read intermittently her unmatchable volume length study of Irish poet Yeats entitled Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, so reasonable, so measured, so close to her subject with affection and intelligence. For i
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. Poetry has often been considered an irrational genre, more expressive than logical, more meditative than given to coherent 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 po
Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. . Helen Vendler is A
--Troy Jollimore (San Francisco Chronicle 2004-10-10)Some people seem surprised by the idea that poets do any thinking at all. One might have expected a book explicitly on poetic thinking to neglect form, and focus only on content. --Alan Shapiro (Harvard Magazine 2005-01-01)One of the most distinguished critics of poetry in the English-speaking worldVendler engages in close reading to find a poem's distinctiveness of language and literary formVendler is really trying to enlarge our idea of what poetry can beIn reminding us to look at and listen to the actual words on the page, and not to leap too soon to some hackneyed idea that they recall, Vendler invites us to expand our own response to experience. --Fiona Green (Times Literary Supplement 2005-10-07)Helen Vendler's Poets Thinking is lucid, accessible, and inspiredVendler's own voice is that rare academic combination of ex