The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: Essays on Poets and Poetry

by Helen Vendler

Overview

A Times Higher Education Book of the Week

One of our foremost commentators on poetry examines the work of a broad range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English, Irish, and American poets. The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar gathers two decades’ worth of Helen Vendler’s essays, book reviews, and occasional prose—including the 2004 Jefferson Lecture—in a single volume.

“It’s one of [Vendler’s] finest books, an impressive summation of a long, distinguished career in which she revisits many of the poets she has venerated over a lifetime and written about previously. Reading it, one can feel her happiness in doing what she loves best. There is scarcely a page in the book where there isn’t a fresh insight about a poet or poetry.”
—Charles Simic, New York Review of Books

“Vendler has done perhaps more than any other living critic to shape—I might almost say ‘create’—our understanding of poetry in English.”
—Joel Brouwer, New York Times Book Review

“Poems are artifacts and [Vendler] shows us, often thrillingly, how those poems she considers the best specimens are made…A reader feels that she has thoroughly absorbed her subjects and conveys her understanding with candor, clarity, wit.”
—John Greening, Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674984080
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	05/14/2018
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	204,418
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Helen Vendler was Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Emerita, at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: How the Arts Help Us to Live 15

2 Fin-de-Siècle Lyric: W. B. Yeats and Jorie Graham 27

3 The Unweary Blues: The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes 43

4 The Nothing That Is: Chickamauga, by Charles Wright 62

5 American X-Rays: Forty Years of Allen Ginsberg's Poetry 71

6 The Waste Land: Fragments and Montage 79

7 The Snow Poems and Garbage: Episodes in A. R. Ammons's Poetics 92

8 All Her Nomads: Collected Poems, by Amy Clampitt 120

9 Seamus Heaney and the Oresteia: "Mycenae Lookout" and the Usefulness of Tradition 130

10 Melville: The Lyric of History 144

11 Lowell's Persistence: The Forms Depression Makes 160

12 Wallace Stevens: Hypotheses and Contradictions, Dedicated to Paul Alpers 177

13 Ardor and Artifice: Merrill's Mozartian Touch 199

14 The Titles: A. R. Ammons, 1926-2001 217

15 Poetry and the Mediation of Value: Whitman on Lincoln 226

16 "Long Pig": The Interconnection of the Exotic, the Dead, and the Fantastic in the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop 241

17 Stevens and Keats's "To Autumn": Reworking the Past 253

18 "The Circulation of Small Largenesses": Mark Ford and John Ashbery 274

19 Wallace Stevens: Memory, Dead and Alive 289

20 Jorie Graham: The Moment of Excess 304

21 Attention, Shoppers: Where Shall I Wander, by John Ashbery 322

22 Seamus Heaney's "Sweeney Redivivus": Its Plot and Its Poems 332

23 The Democratic Eye: A Worldly Country, by John Ashbery 356

24 Losing the Marbles: James Merrill on Greece 368

25 Mark Ford: Intriguing, Funny, Prophetic 389

26 Notes from the Trepidarium: Stay, Illusion, by Lucie Brock-Broido 399

27 Pried Open for All the World to See: Berryman the Poet 410

Notes 423

Credits 431

Acknowledgments 435

Index 437

Editorial Reviews

Vendler brings fresh insights on Whitman, Yeats, Eliot, Bishop, Ammons, Ashbery and others, but the most crucial piece is the title essay, an argument to place the arts at the center of our educational system rather than its periphery: "After all, it is by their arts that cultures are principally remembered." And it's through the work of exceptional critics like Vendler that those arts are made negotiable to the cultures that produced them.

The New York Times Book Review - Joel Brouwer

★ 03/23/2015
In this triumphant collection, Vendler (Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries) reminds us why she is one of the most important living scholars of poetry. Although her renowned work has included several studies of Yeats and painstaking close readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets, most of the 27 essays showcased in this book are rooted in American soil. But the geographically grounded collection is anything but constricted: its essays, in their varied approaches, open up America’s haunting, startlingly alive poetic landscape. The first entry analyzes the Wallace Stevens poem “Somnabulisma,” the imagery of which inspired this book’s title, while later essays illuminate key poets like John Ashbery, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, and Seamus Heaney. The most rewarding selection, however, may be the introduction, in which Vendler turns to her own history and experience as a scholar. Here her writing evinces the same sensitivity and sustained poetic focus that is, as the close readings in her essays show, so critical to her criticism. This book, with its oceans of depth, reminds us why we need poetry—as well as teachers like Vendler to bring it to transformative life. (May)

Publishers Weekly

It’s one of [Vendler’s] finest books, an impressive summation of a long, distinguished career in which she revisits many of the poets she has venerated over a lifetime and written about previously. Reading it, one can feel her happiness in doing what she loves best. There is scarcely a page in the book where there isn’t a fresh insight about a poet or poetry.
-- Charles Simic New York Review of Books

Vendler has done perhaps more than any other living critic to shape—I might almost say ‘create’—our understanding of poetry in English… Vendler brings fresh insights on Whitman, Yeats, Eliot, Bishop, Ammons, Ashbery and others, but the most crucial piece is the title essay, an argument to place the arts at the center of our educational system rather than its periphery: ‘After all, it is by their arts that cultures are principally remembered.’ And it’s through the work of exceptional critics like Vendler that those arts are made negotiable to the cultures that produced them.
-- Joel Brouwer New York Times Book Review

Poems are artifacts and [Vendler] shows us, often thrillingly, how those poems she considers the best specimens are made… A reader feels that she has thoroughly absorbed her subjects and conveys her understanding with candor, clarity, wit.
-- John Greening Times Literary Supplement

The formidable poetry critic Helen Vendler gathers together over two decades of essays, book reviews, and prose examining a broad range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English, Irish, and American poets. Taken together, her writings serve as an eloquent argument for the necessity of poetry both in humanistic study and in modern life.
-- Christine Emba New Criterion

A generous collection of essays spanning 35 years…, by one of our best critics, is an event worth celebrating… Vendler claims, modestly, that readers including herself will always need a path into some poems and poets, and suggests that the function of criticism is to provide such a path. She does this splendidly, and creating such paths for contemporary poets who have not yet accumulated a body of interpretation for their work is a very special gift… These essays will be a pleasure for readers of poetry and a service to the poets Vendler chooses for her close readings.
-- Elizabeth Greene Times Higher Education

A new book by Helen Vendler is always occasion for gratitude, since for more than 50 years she has provided us with the most exacting writing about poetry of any American critic… She is at her best in commentaries on Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, and John Berryman… Vendler argues for the centrality of the arts in a humanities curriculum, since their demand for ‘subtlety of response’ can’t be duplicated. Her own essays are a vivid proof of what such response can look like.
-- William H. Pritchard Boston Globe

In this triumphant collection, Vendler reminds us why she is one of the most important living scholars of poetry… This book, with its oceans of depth, reminds us why we need poetry—as well as teachers like Vendler to bring it to transformative life.
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

The formidable poetry critic Helen Vendler gathers together over two decades of essays, book reviews, and prose examining a broad range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English, Irish, and American poets. Taken together, her writings serve as an eloquent argument for the necessity of poetry both in humanistic study and in modern life.

New Criterion - Christine Emba

Vendler has done perhaps more than any other living critic to shape—I might almost say ‘create’—our understanding of poetry in English… Vendler brings fresh insights on Whitman, Yeats, Eliot, Bishop, Ammons, Ashbery and others, but the most crucial piece is the title essay, an argument to place the arts at the center of our educational system rather than its periphery: ‘After all, it is by their arts that cultures are principally remembered.’ And it’s through the work of exceptional critics like Vendler that those arts are made negotiable to the cultures that produced them.

New York Times Book Review - Joel Brouwer

Poems are artifacts and [Vendler] shows us, often thrillingly, how those poems she considers the best specimens are made… A reader feels that she has thoroughly absorbed her subjects and conveys her understanding with candor, clarity, wit.

Times Literary Supplement - John Greening

A new book by Helen Vendler is always occasion for gratitude, since for more than 50 years she has provided us with the most exacting writing about poetry of any American critic… She is at her best in commentaries on Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, and John Berryman… Vendler argues for the centrality of the arts in a humanities curriculum, since their demand for ‘subtlety of response’ can’t be duplicated. Her own essays are a vivid proof of what such response can look like.

Boston Globe - William H. Pritchard

It’s one of [Vendler’s] finest books, an impressive summation of a long, distinguished career in which she revisits many of the poets she has venerated over a lifetime and written about previously. Reading it, one can feel her happiness in doing what she loves best. There is scarcely a page in the book where there isn’t a fresh insight about a poet or poetry.

New York Review of Books - Charles Simic

A generous collection of essays spanning 35 years…, by one of our best critics, is an event worth celebrating… Vendler claims, modestly, that readers including herself will always need a path into some poems and poets, and suggests that the function of criticism is to provide such a path. She does this splendidly, and creating such paths for contemporary poets who have not yet accumulated a body of interpretation for their work is a very special gift… These essays will be a pleasure for readers of poetry and a service to the poets Vendler chooses for her close readings.

Times Higher Education - Elizabeth Greene

Praise for Helen Vendler:

Helen Vendler is the best poetry reviewer in America.

The New Republic

Praise for Helen Vendler:

Helen Vendler puts herself entirely at the service of the poets she is talking about. Although she writes too well to be invisible, she does not compete or pontificate either… What she does is to offer the poetry to you.

The New York Times