Helen Vendler
Helen Vendler
Helen Hennessy Vendleris an American literary critic and is the A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 April 1933
CountryUnited States of America
chance friend harvard heard listen recording wallace
When I first heard Wallace Stevens' voice, it was by chance: a friend wanted to listen to the recording he had made for the Harvard Vocarium Series.
peculiar poet work written
I wouldn't be very happy if a poet read what I had written and said, 'What a peculiar thing to say about this work of mine.'
actual gets mind quite rather time work
I always write after I think for quite a long time, so the actual writing time is rather short. I think a lot of the work gets done when you have something on your mind while you're doing many other things.
french poetry spanish spend spoke time
I would like to spend more time with Spanish poetry. I know French better than Spanish, but Spanish was my first language, and my father spoke it to us.
believe overhear performance poems score speaking
I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voice. You don't read or overhear the voice in the poem - you are the voice in the poem.
concepts fairly familiar flow hard literary ordinary particular though using vocabulary
I think that a lot of things are hard to read if you're not in the vocabulary flow of that particular discourse. I sometimes forget that even though the words I'm using are fairly ordinary words, the concepts around which they cluster, which are the long concepts of literary tradition, may not be familiar to an audience.
names giving primitive
I do not give the honorific name of 'poetry' to the primitive and the unaccomplished.
needs transformation rhythm
A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.
past poet exception
All good poets of the past, almost without exception, were at least bilingual if not trilingual.
self expression criticism
For the critic, criticism is a form of natural self-expression, as poetry is to the poet. So, for a critic, criticism is a true thing. Criticism isn’t written for poets, it’s written for other readers. One hopes it is true for other readers if it’s true for oneself.
soul identity destined
Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity.
college discovery views
For the mind and the imagination, bookstores aren't enough, college courses aren't enough, the Internet isn't enough. Those resources are all governed by the tastes and needs of the moment. Only libraries take the long view, quietly shelving the unused with the used, knowing that one of these days the two categories will be reversed by a student's discovery of those hitherto undisturbed volumes whose contents will unsettle the learned world.
teaching together height
I liked teaching Henry James. When you look down at a Henry James novel from a helicopter height, you find an intricate spider web that all clings together.
pages way precision
If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.