Helen Vendler died on April 23, 2024, the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard.  Called “the Colossus of poetry criticism” by the New York Times, she joined the Harvard faculty in 1985 and became Harvard’s first woman University Professor.

In one of her five invited lecture series, she quoted Joseph Conrad on “that mysterious power—of producing striking effects by means impossible of detection which is the last word of the highest art.”  Her career was devoted to explicating that ‘mysterious power’. In his Faculty of Arts and Sciences tribute to Vendler, a colleague notes that she “wrote brilliantly about George Herbert, authoritatively on Emily Dickinson, fundamentally on Wallace Stevens, and indispensably on Seamus Heaney”.  She authored or edited 22 books about  poetry and poets.

In “Soul Says” (a title taken from a poem by Jorie Graham who is the subject of three essays in this book), Vendler analyzes the life and poetry of 21 poets, from the well-known (Ginsberg, Snyder, Dove, Ashbery, Gluck, Ammons, Simic, Merrill) to the more obscure (Schuyler, Goldbarth, Davie, Kleinzahler).  Her criteria for choosing these poets are their presence, force, originality, strenuousness, daring, and idiosyncrasy.  Her clear, concise, and straight-forward style focused on even the most obscure poems provides insight, understanding, and ultimately an appreciation of the poet’s craft.  There are some priceless lines which she quotes, e.g. A.R. Ammons writes “I go to/nature because man is scary.” or James Schuyler’s “The day/offers so much, holds/so little or is it/simply you who/asking too much/take too little.”  And then there is the quote by Vendler of poet Alan Williamson who wrote about “little defiant rescues of pure momentariness from the grid of generalized time that is built into grammar itself.”  

This is not easy sledding, and near the end of the 265 pages, my attention span did dwindle.  As in much of literary criticism, the greatest value of this book was in its introduction, the place where Vendler summarized and focused her views on poetry and art.  Reading it was a wonderful reminder of why poetry remains important to me.  Here is how Vendler described the poet and the critic:    “The senses and the imagination together furnish rhythms for the poet. The rhythms of the poet translate themselves back, in the mind of the reader, into the senses and the imagination.  What is it about the critic that cannot rest content with this silent transaction?  Most of the time, the critic is just another reader, and can put a book down, whether with appreciation or irritation, without any wish to write something about that book. Yet, certain books will not let the critic look away; they demand a fuller response, and they will not let go until another set of words, this time in the critic’s own prose, renders again the given of the book.  Something in the book—or in a single poem—is a “hatching that stared and demanded an answering look.”  That phrase is Wallace Stevens’; and though he used it about the poet’s response to life (newborn every day), it is equally true of the critic’s response to a significant piece of writing.”   That is simply magnificent!

I wouldn’t recommend this book in its entirety, but if you have any interest in poetry or literary criticism, read the introduction, and if you have a favorite poet, (I especially liked the chapter on Charles Simic, but that may be because we both graduated from the same high school.), read that chapter as well. Vendler’s insights and wisdom will be missed.