
Poets Thinking
Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats
Helen Vendler(Author)
Harvard University Press
Published on 1. April 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-0-674-02110-5 (ISBN)
Description
"In reminding us to look at and listen to the actual words on the page...Vendler invites us to expand our response to experience, and to find in it-if we are both attentive and lucky-beauty and solace."
-Christopher Benfey, New York Review of Books
The grand dame of poetic criticism defends lyric poetry as a product of fierce intelligence as much as creative inspiration.
Poetry has often been considered an irrational genre, more expressive than logical, more meditative than given to coherent argument. And yet, in each of the four very different poets she considers here, Helen Vendler reveals a style of thinking in operation. All poets of any value are thinkers, she argues, even if no two think alike.
The four poets taken up in this volume-Alexander Pope, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and William Butler Yeats-come from three different centuries and three different nations, and their styles of thinking are characteristically idiosyncratic. Vendler gives us Pope performing as a satiric miniaturizer, remaking in verse the form of the essay; Whitman writing as a poet of repetitive insistence for whom thinking must be followed by rethinking; Dickinson experimenting with plot to characterize life's unfolding; and Yeats thinking in images, using montage in lieu of argument.
With customary lucidity and vigor, Vendler pores over these poets' lines to find evidence of thought in lyric, from subtle stylistic shifts that embody changes of mind to images that serve as condensations of concepts and emotions. Far more than in (frequently well-worn) themes, she demonstrates that poetic genius resides in open-ended contemplation: the interminable work of recalling, evaluating, and structuring experience in verse. Never linear or merely propositional, poems show us the human mind in process, inviting us to participate in experiential discoveries as they unfold.
-Christopher Benfey, New York Review of Books
The grand dame of poetic criticism defends lyric poetry as a product of fierce intelligence as much as creative inspiration.
Poetry has often been considered an irrational genre, more expressive than logical, more meditative than given to coherent argument. And yet, in each of the four very different poets she considers here, Helen Vendler reveals a style of thinking in operation. All poets of any value are thinkers, she argues, even if no two think alike.
The four poets taken up in this volume-Alexander Pope, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and William Butler Yeats-come from three different centuries and three different nations, and their styles of thinking are characteristically idiosyncratic. Vendler gives us Pope performing as a satiric miniaturizer, remaking in verse the form of the essay; Whitman writing as a poet of repetitive insistence for whom thinking must be followed by rethinking; Dickinson experimenting with plot to characterize life's unfolding; and Yeats thinking in images, using montage in lieu of argument.
With customary lucidity and vigor, Vendler pores over these poets' lines to find evidence of thought in lyric, from subtle stylistic shifts that embody changes of mind to images that serve as condensations of concepts and emotions. Far more than in (frequently well-worn) themes, she demonstrates that poetic genius resides in open-ended contemplation: the interminable work of recalling, evaluating, and structuring experience in verse. Never linear or merely propositional, poems show us the human mind in process, inviting us to participate in experiential discoveries as they unfold.
Reviews / Votes
Poetry is often regarded as the product of inspiration rather than intellect. Vendler seeks to emphasize the importance of thought in poetry...She shows poetic thought as reflected in poetic voice, structure, and prosody in four poets: Alexander Pope, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and W. B. Yeats...Vendler's convincing and illuminating arguments make this book highly recommended. -- Amy K. Weiss * Library Journal * [Vendler's] thoughtful and insightful readings of poems by Alexander Pope, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and William Butler Yeats demonstrate the central and indeed essential role of sophisticated thinking in the poetic enterprise...To navigate the intricacies of thought that a poem contains, it is hard to imagine a better guide than Vendler herself. Her most admirable achievement is perhaps her ability to illuminate the connection between what a poem says and the formally oriented issue of how it says it. One might have expected a book explicitly on poetic thinking to neglect form, and focus only on content. But Vendler considers this approach a serious mistake, and her insights regarding form constitute the strongest argument for this position. -- Troy Jollimore * San Francisco Chronicle * Some people seem surprised by the idea that poets do any thinking at all. There is a popular image of the poet as a wild, inspired, untutored and half-mad figure striding across the heath. Helen Vendler's new book, Poet's Thinking, if it is read as widely as it ought to be, will help considerably to correct this misperception. * San Francisco Chronicle * In her challenging and entertaining new book, Poets Thinking, Helen Vendler argues that poetry in all its manifestations, however ostensibly irrational, is a mode of thinking that commands not just our aesthetic appreciation but also our intellectual respect...Vendler is a wonderful elucidator of individual poems. Nobody writes more insightfully about a poem's stylistic armature, and the emotional and intellectual purposes that armature serves. And by examining the distinctive strategies of thinking in the work of such radically different poets as Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, and Yeats, Vendler makes visible aspects of style and language that other critics simply haven't seen. -- Alan Shapiro * Harvard Magazine * One of the most distinguished critics of poetry in the English-speaking world...Vendler engages in close reading to find a poem's distinctiveness of language and literary form...Vendler is really trying to enlarge our idea of what poetry can be...In 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. -- Christopher Benfey * New York Review of Books * Vendler's close readings lay bare the process of poetic reflection: Poets Thinking is about how rather than what poets think, about the act of the mind rather than any 'embalmed thought' that readers might want to extract from verse...Vendler is exceptionally skilled at demonstrating that poetry offers us pictures of the mind at work rather than settled axioms to take away...[Poets Thinking] has a good deal to offer in the way of thought-provoking and sometimes dazzling readings of British and American poetry. -- Fiona Green * Times Literary Supplement * Helen Vendler's Poets Thinking is lucid, accessible, and inspired...Vendler's own voice is that rare academic combination of expertise and accommodation...Her arguments provide ample explanation and exempla for the lay reader while provoking the academic to revisit old assumptions. She is at ease with the broad sweep of American and English poetry and with the critical methods of the last half-century. Her conclusions seem remarkably self-evident, a voice of trustworthiness and reason that encourages us to lean closer, to listen carefully. -- Lynnell Edwards * Georgia Review *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
none
Dimensions
Height: 202 mm
Width: 141 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
195 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-02110-5 (9780674021105)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
07/2009
Harvard University Press
€35.49
Available for download
Person
Helen Vendler (1933-2024) was a leading poetry critic and the author of nineteen books on poets from William Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney. A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, she contributed regularly to the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, and the New Republic. She was the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University.