photos of Helen VendlerA Poem for Helen Vendler (1933-2024): ‘Valediction for a Critic’ by Margaret Coats The Society September 16, 2024 Beauty, Poetry 32 Comments . Valediction for a Critic “She can second-guess the sixth sense of a poem.” —Seamus Heaney “I thought—and still think—that all people would like poetry if they were only brought up with it and shown how easily it is entered into, and what enormous solace it has to offer.” —Helen Vendler (April 30, 1933 – April 23, 2024) Where speedwell on Pacific beachsides bloomed, She who had smiled to ponder poetry On Shakespeare’s birthday left a clan perfumed With lyric solace prompting memory. The Bard and she remain confederate, For only she wrote of each sonnet all She saw, with sympathy so delicate They dance in rapture of response and call. Near Boston born of Irish ancestry, A hundred words at one year old she knew. Her mother, household fount of poetry, Poured love of verse and learning—Helen grew. Science, she said, was key to all she did, Exactitude and balance in equations, With nothing graphed on her Cartesian grid But poetry, all centuries, all nations. Good poets of the past were multilingual, She noted. English doesn’t stand alone When eloquence and cultures intermingle On literary heights of passion known. She wrote to speak of poems. Not a poet, She felt she understood the art would be Always to prize condensed, unusual language, The feast for minds intent on poetry. In wisdom’s wider field, she took a stance Of sense against dull anti-intellectual Demagogues who say, “My ignorance Equals your knowledge, making speech effectual.” With incense rising from the Muses’ flame, She roused to fluency the living lyre Of many versers fortunate to claim Sweet friendship kindled in her living fire. The brilliance of her critical career Was dimmer to the dearer son she reared Because she loved, not worked, while he was near, And to one trothless husband’s name adhered. From seeds of laurel planted in soft earth, The blossoms of her sprightly teaching soar, By music’s mist how gently kissed with mirth, Alluring to Apollo more and more. She scorned to domineer or state, “We need My own poetics to be taught in school.” An education mainly means to read And read—devouring volumes as a rule. Her reading poems aloud, though, tried to steer Her students not to think a poet’s choice Of speaker someone they could overhear: In poetry, she taught, you are the voice. Her scholarship still lovingly sustains me, Her kindness sharing draughts of Helicon, But as her genial star departed faintly, The moon dropped into night, its brightness gone. I know of faults, hidden by fading covers, None felt by me, unspecified in hope That she who brought nine Muses countless lovers May rest beneath the Queen of Heaven’s cope, Forever sun-warmed like the heliotrope. . . Quotes for classical poets from Helen Vendler (1933–2024) “The art of utterance persuades initially by its music and its rhythm, before semiotic or personal characteristics come into play.” “Without play at many levels of language, from phonemes to logical structure, a poem is merely prose with linebreaks added.” “Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask of it.” . . Margaret Coats lives in California. She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable wrk in homeschooling for her own family and others. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. CODEC Stories:Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) 32 Responses James Sale September 16, 2024 A beautiful poem, Margaret – a moving elegy and tribute; and I remember reading Helen V as an undergraduate and enjoying her critical works – though sadly now I don’t seem to have a book by her on my shelves. The kind of close reading and criticism she espoused in now massively out of fashion. Thanks for reminding me of a stellar spirit. Reply Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 James, your early comments are always so very welcome, and today I’m especially glad to hear this poem is beautiful. It commemorates a beautiful spirit with whom I had the pleasure to work, and only wish we could have met more often in recent years. Helen Vendler’s style of criticism was uniquely capable of making many, many readers see the beauty in poetry. Reply Warren Bonham September 16, 2024 Although it’s preposterous of me after having been introduced to Helen V only a few moments ago to think that I can presume to speak for her, I will do so anyway. I think she would have been carried away by the music and rhythm of your poem before likely being embarrassed by the moving tribute to her. Thanks for the great start to the day. Reply Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 Yes, Warren, the music and the rhythm would have pleased her. I’m very happy to introduce you to Helen Vendler and a few of her memorable perspectives on poetry. Reply Paul Freeman September 16, 2024 A worthy tribute, Margaret. We tend to think negatively of critics, but in Helen Vendler’s case, your words paint a picture of a highly and justly respected academic who loved her work, loved poetry and conveyed that love. Even the pictures tell this same story. Reply Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 Thanks, Paul. Conveying the love of poetry meant very much to Helen. At one comfortable breathing spell during her last few years, she was able to conduct a summer program for high school teachers, in order to extend that work as far as possible. I’m glad you picked up on that aspect from my poem; always appreciate your reading. Reply Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 Evan Mantyk, in relation to Paul Freeman’s comment, let me thank you for two good pictures of Vendler smiling. These are not easy to find, but my description of Helen as “she who had smiled to ponder poetry” is the simple truth of all the lectures I heard her give. Reply Roy Eugene Peterson September 16, 2024 Helen Vendler must have held a special place in your heart to have earned such a magical and magnificent tribute. If you were not one of her students, I suspect she was still a mentor to your brilliant poetic skills. She would have been humbled and moved by your praise and caring. Reply Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 She was a caring friend, Roy, long after we necessarily parted. I was not her student, but we shared an interest in poetry above other literature. As a graduate student, I had to specialize in a historical period, and therefore could not have Helen (who refused to specialize) as my advisor, but she chose me as one of the teaching fellows to conduct discussion sections for her large lecture class on “Poems, Poets, Poetry.” No other professor-lecturer ever came to listen to a discussion section. When I was homeschooling, she understood the value of that, and treated me as a friend and professional equal at a conference where she was the invited distinguished speaker. I started writing poetry seriously at a time when she was on leave because of illness, but she read my work anyway. I knew she would–she couldn’t resist poetry! And she knew I didn’t want her to make any effort beyond the reading. I benefit from having heard her “sprightly teaching” and from a poetic and critical spirit we seemed to share before we met. Reply jd September 16, 2024 Thank you for this poetic introduction to a woman who certainly earned your excellently written praise. I will have to do a little exploration on my own now. By the way, Margaret, today I discovered a Jonathan Reid with the traditionalcatholicprayers.com site. I have the feeling he could be Father Carota’s Jonathan. Maybe it’s just a “feather” in my heart but… Reply Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 Thank you, jd. This poem is an introduction to someone whose ideals and attitudes we as writers and readers can share and be uplifted by. I looked at the traditionalcatholicprayers site, which seems to be an excellent compilation of devotional material. Forgot to check whether there is contact information for Jonathan, but if not, there seems to be a rolling comment platform like ours here, that he is likely to notice. The similarity of the address to Father Carota’s suggests a connection. Reply Joseph S. Salemi September 16, 2024 Vendler was a great critic — deeply learned, perceptive, articulate, and knowledgeable about many styles and types of poetic composition. She had also been trained in the formalism of the New Critic I. A. Richards, so she was very skilled at close reading. She had plenty of enemies — the controversy over her review of the anthology brought out by Rita Dove brought all of these enemies out of the woodwork. It was in the cards for the freak-scene types to hate her. Vendler had made her scholarly reputation at a time before the explosion of garbage art turned poetry into the clown-show that it is today, so she was well positioned to critique much of its fraudulence, from unassailable academic heights. She was an acute reader and insightful commentator, but she did at times place too much emphasis on a poet’s personal motivation, feelings, and beliefs. And she had the bad habit of over-explaining what she meant, in ways that suggested pomposity at times. But we all have our faults, don’t we? Reply Margaret Coats September 17, 2024 Joe, thank you immensely for this perspective on Helen Vendler. I recall when you first learned I had worked with her, you remarked that she always had something good to say. In accord with her teaching about the elegy genre, I treat enemies and faults of the deceased lightly in this poem. You do the same, recalling just the controversy with Rita Dove, which was, as you say, an opportunity for all the others to emerge. I refer to the broad category of anti-intellectuals who would prefer there to be no serious critical analysis of poetry. They could have been “democrat” writers or readers pushing for plain language and/or gushing emotion as the pre-eminent feature in poems, but “demagogue” is fitting and more precise. For these, any explaining is overexplaining. We do all have our faults, so I’ll explain here part of my above poem that will be lost to readers who never hear the great Vendler lecture on the elegy, where an example poem is “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed” by Whitman for Lincoln. My first line adapts it to Vendler’s death in California. I make her a “genial star” in contrast to Whitman’s “great star,” and in both poems the moon drops. To me the moon represents poetry less bright without good criticism. This means less to anyone who has not heard Vendler read Whitman, and thus never felt like an American in 1865, standing near a railroad depot to see Lincoln’s funeral train pass. Yes, Whitman’s elegy is free verse that rambles on far too long, and no model for formal classical poetry. The allusion will work, I hope, for some who may read this. Thanks again for your attention and your comment. Reply Daniel Kemper September 16, 2024 Wish I had more brain space available to praise this. I love reading these; I hate knowing the reason for reading. Selfish, I know, to want those now in such a much better place to be in this little disaster we call life, but there it is. Critics need to be acknowledged; it is an art as much as what they critique. Well done to bring it out, to remember her, and to contribute such a poem to the ongoing tradition. Reply Margaret Coats September 17, 2024 Thanks, Daniel, I’m glad you love reading such poems despite the sad reason for them. Memorial elegies can deliver a fuller “sense of person” than poems of praise during life, or of praise for a long-departed figure–especially in a poem like this that has to be an introduction for many readers. You are so right that critics need to be acknowledged. They help readers to read, and they help writers to understand what they are doing. Here I say Helen Vendler thought that what poets do is “always prize condensed, unusual language.” True (generally) but too universal to interpret one poem or one certain poet’s style. The application to actual reading is the work. I happily contribute to remembrance of one critic for whom this work was a clearly chosen delight. Reply Brian A. Yapko September 17, 2024 Margaret, this is a splendid tribute poem! I’m completely ignorant concerning critic Helen Vendler, but based on this valediction I’d like to know more. Her quotes certainly grab me as does your skilled portrait of a perceptive, articulate woman who loved poetry. If she was your friend, I offer my condolences. The poem’s craftsmanship is obvious so I’d like to address some of the content: I’m intrigued by the stanza in which you quote her: “Science, she said, was key to all she did, Exactitude and balance in equations, With nothing graphed on her Cartesian grid But poetry, all centuries, all nations. How does one apply scientific methodology to the reading of poetry? I’m sure there must be truth to this but cannot articulate exactly why. Is this merely a function of scansion and explication? Noting meter, form, use of poetic devices? Or is there something deeper in that Cartesian grid? I also am intrigued by the statement empowering the reader: “In poetry, she taught, you are the voice.” I’m not sure I agree with this. I rather think the reader – while bringing himself or herself to the poem – nevertheless is listening to and interpreting the poet’s voice. I believe that subjective readings of poetry are inevitable. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that an objective reading of poetry is impossible. But to me it is something of a dialogue between the poet and the reader. Perhaps that’s compatible with Ms. Vendler’s point of view…? Lest I get too far off track, let me just remark that I find your poem quite beautiful and fondly respectful of someone I would have enjoyed conversing with. And ending with that heliotrope in an expanded 5 line stanza was inspired. A fitting farewell. Reply Mike Bryant September 17, 2024 Brian, Helen explains how science informs her critiques: You have to be exact in all your writing in science: your flow chart has to go from beginning to end with all the steps accounted for, and all the equations have to balance out. Evidence has to be presented for each step of your reasoning. Science is very beautiful in its structural shapes, too. Organic chemistry pleased me almost more than anything else, because of the three-dimensionality of the assemblage of the molecules and the complication of the organic structures. It was just like seeing the structures of poetry: a molecular branch could go this way, or that way, there could be all sorts of wonderful, complex arrangements. I loved those geometric arrangements, as I love them in poetry. – Helen Vendler Reply Margaret Coats September 18, 2024 Brian, thank you for your sympathy. I seem to feel this loss more and more. And thanks for commending the poetic craft of the elegy. I know Helen herself would be charmed by the sprig of heliotrope in the final line. Laying a flower on the grave is classic for this kind of poem. With regard to Helen’s science, Mike Bryant has graciously provided quotes that show how she thought of chemistry as a metaphor for poetry. The application of it to interpretation is manifold. First, in close reading, neglect nothing. You express an understanding of that, and it goes along with Helen’s ability to discern “play at many levels of language.” Another is that “evidence” for interpretation is the words of the poem. Period. Joe Salemi says above that Helen paid more attention than he would to the poet’s “personal motivation, feelings, and beliefs.” But why? Only to determine how words (that have more than one sense) are being used in the poem, not to introduce new reactants or products into the equation. All this, still, is not truly an application of scientific methodology to reading. Education in science (Helen’s in chemistry, mine in physics) enabled us to see that language and literature have many variables that defy the would-be scientific approach of structuralism. Critical approaches coming after structuralism recognized its failure, and went in directions that can only be called disorderly. Helen maintained highly orderly critical writing, which is where her scientific skills in interpretation shine. Her writing shows frequent touches of lab report logic and style, if I may say so. This is unknown to most literary critics. Its balance and clarity are remarkable. To balance the “equations” in that “Science” stanza, I put in “nations,” to show Helen’s claim of all poetry (and nothing else) as her field (her Cartesian grid in my metaphor). You quoted the whole “all” stanza (science as key and global poetry as field of her work). In practice, she wrote mostly of English and American poetry, but read poetry and criticism in several other languages. Brian, you understand as well that her assertion “You are the voice” is meant to empower the reader. Helen wanted students and others to enter in, read aloud, and feel themselves as the speaker in a poem. She specifically said not to act as if overhearing what the poet says in his chosen speaker. That can scare some poets. And I do recall an instance when she said almost offhand (if a lecturer can say anything offhand in a Victorian theater of a lecture hall) that a writer who wants only a single interpretation of his poem should keep it to himself. You understand that too. She also said, more reflectively, that the poet who finishes and publishes a poem then becomes a reader and interpreter of his own work, with more information about it than other readers, but not a legislator concerning how to read. Again, scary to some poets. Helen Vendler was out to give poetry a wealth of readers acting as interpreters. The limits on this are her own: base interpretations on the words of the poem, and when asking questions about it, follow the guidance the poem itself provides. To your idea of a dialogue between poet and reader, Helen would say yes, in this sense: you as poet contribute the speech act of the poem; the reader accepts it as terms under which he responds by interpreting it. This may sound like “reader response” criticism, but is different if you know the school of literary criticism by that name. Vendler’s mode is more direct between individuals which, I hope, pleases you. Reply Mike Bryant September 17, 2024 Margaret, Helen Vendler was a phenomenon. I learned of her years ago because Susan brought “The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets” with her when she came to Texas. It was required reading for her literature degree and I have learned much from it. I appreciate you highlighting how her skills in the hard sciences improve her critiques on poetry. I think she also had a degree in chemistry. The only thing that has me wondering is the “My ignorance / Equals your knowledge… ” quote. Did Helen Vendler say that? I used to be a huge fan of that rascal Isaac Asimov, and it sounds like a quote from one of his essays. Helen sets a high standard for any critic. She was always concerned that she had the poet’s intent exactly right. ”What I would hope is that if Keats read what I had written about the ode ‘To Autumn,’ he would say, ‘Yes, that is the way I wanted it to be thought of.’ And ‘Yes, you have unfolded what I had implied,’ or something like that. It would not strike the poet, I hope, that there was a discrepancy between my description of the work and the poet’s own conception of it. I wouldn’t be happy if a poet read what I had written and said, ‘What a peculiar thing to say about this work of mine.’” – Helen Vendler Reply Margaret Coats September 19, 2024 Thanks, Mike! It’s good to get a comment from our busy moderator. As I said to Brian above, I appreciate your bringing up Helen Vendler’s quote on her metaphorical association of chemistry and poetry. I’m rather slow on answering at present because of the nearing wrap-up of the haiku contest. About that quote that has you wondering, it’s Helen’s opponents, “dull anti-intellectuals” who say it. Look back at the stanza and I think you’ll get it. That is, as I told Joe Salemi, the only place where I mention her many enemies. The anti-intellectuals are those among them who don’t want analysis based on knowledge to be applied (in this case, specifically to poetry), and thus they claim ignorance as its equivalent. We see plenty of “democratic demagogues” like that in many subjects. In your quote of Helen about her interpretation of Keats, please notice that she doesn’t use the word “intent.” Seeking a poet’s intent is not her critical methodology. Her interpretation is hers, never exactly what the poet might have thought in some impossible psychological reconstruction. She hopes, rather, that a poet would have been comfortable with what she says, given necessary differences between minds and situations. When Seamus Heaney said Helen could “second-guess the sixth sense of a poem,” he spoke of what her unique talent could find in a poem that even the poet might not have seen or explicitly intended. That happens because the poet’s material (language) belongs not to him as paint and canvas belong to a painter, but to everyone who speaks and understands the language. Jorie Graham said Helen’s unsolicited review of one of her books had revealed to her what she was doing in poetry. I mentioned that remark to one of our fellow poets, who replied that we need to learn what we’re doing. That kind of criticism is valuable. Helen’s style of criticism begins not with poetry per se, and not with the poet, but with the poem. I dealt with this somewhat in answering Brian’s question about “You are the voice,” which is certainly one of the quotes most often heard from the quotable Vendler. It’s how she taught students to be better readers by not fearing to become interpreters. In lecture, she interpreted poems, and began to build up a knowledge of poets from their poems. In discussion sections, we teaching fellows were not to lecture or interpret, but to ask questions and get the students to interpret. What questions? The ones each poem suggests! Helen didn’t divide her syllabus by poet, but by genre. We can’t ask good questions unless we discern what kind of poem it is. You see that in the Shakespeare sonnet commentary. I put the book into my second stanza above not just because Helen died on Shakespeare’s birthday, but because she felt satisfied at having read each sonnet in a individual way never before done. I describe it as “call and response” between her and Shakespeare–each step of their dance set by one particular poem. Since her book was published, it has been seriously proposed that not all the sonnets are Shakespeare’s. That may very well be true. The quality varies, and the publisher responsible for the collection may have put together everything he thought would sell. If there are works by various poets in the collection, that does not change the value of Helen’s interpretations. They focus on poems first! Reply Mike Bryant September 20, 2024 Margaret, I definitely agree with you about “dull anti-intellectuals.” There is a huge cult of pseudo-intellectuals in the United States. It was planted and encouraged in our universities after World War II by our government’s installation of professors dedicated to the Frankfurt School. This strain of humanist collectivism and snobbery is a growing thread that has wound its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the freedom-killing notion that the warped wisdom of government educated and supported experts must trump common sense. So yes, Helen Vendler was definitely attacked by those “dull anti-intellectual,” critical theory spouting demagogues. As for “intent,” you’re right. She wasn’t talking about intent. She said, “It would not strike the poet, I hope, that there was a discrepancy between my description of the work and the poet’s own conception of it.” She sets a high standard for all poetry critics. The National Endowment for the Humanities has a great post about Helen Vendler here: https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/helen-vendler-biography After the introduction there are four clickable headings – Appreciation, Excerpts, Interview, and Lecture Text. Under the first heading, “Appreciation” is a short essay by Henri Cole titled “The Poem Unfolded” in which Cole gives us a loving look at Helen Vendler from the perspective of colleague, friend and admirer. It is well worth reading. A couple of selections from Cole’s remembrance: In analyzing any poem, you are like a conductor studying a score, seeing the whole and at the same time noticing the compelling detail, as the long arc of linked sounds displays individual ravishing moments. – Helen Vendler 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. -Helen Vendler Reply Margaret Coats September 27, 2024 Yes, Mike, you are correct about anti-intellectuals as those who fail to think for themselves, and who accept politically promoted points of view without question. Interestingly enough, the leading “thinkers” who want to prescribe dogma to be held by others, are often poor at thinking themselves. Their aim is to lead and rule, without exercising powers of the mind. Thus we may hear such “thinkers” praise the “primitives,” or uncivilized societies and uneducated individuals as equal to, or even superior to, those with highly developed culture. Poetry may be valued by such persons, but mainly for its simplicity and utility in maintaining social control. There is no real value for poetry as art, and thus no value in literary criticism that explains and appreciates art. Reply Margaret Coats September 27, 2024 And thank you very much for pointing out easily available resources that can add to appreciation of Helen Vendler’s unique accomplishments as a critic of poetry. Reply Mike Bryant September 27, 2024 Your welcome! Her expositions of Shakespeare’s sonnets are astonishing. Stephen M. Dickey September 17, 2024 I’m tempted to think even Harold Bloom didn’t get a eulogy of this class. I particularly value Vendler’s book on Shakespeare’s sonnets, which comes with a CD of her reading selections in the back cover, an oral legacy now. Reply Margaret Coats September 19, 2024 Stephen, this comment almost made me cry, to think that my elegy is such a classy eulogy. For Helen Vendler, it had to be a poem, while for Harold Bloom, it must be a Gedenkschrift that he probably has by now. He was a critic of poetry, but also of education and civilization. Helen’s book on Shakespeare’s sonnets will probably turn out to be the most widely useful and maybe the longest used of her books. She was justifiably proud of it in particular, which is why it figures in the second stanza of my poem above. Reply Adam Sedia September 18, 2024 I like how you set up the poem: before you mourn, you tell us something about its subject. By the end, I felt as though I knew her. You conveyed in a few stanzas more than what a 5,000-word essay could. I wish I had known of Ms. Vendler while she was alive. The quotations you give are spot-on, particularly the one you use as the second epigraph. I am reminded of my grandfather, who had only a high school education, reciting lines of poetry at times they seemed to fit (“The Rubaiyat” was a favorite of his). That’s something that for earlier generations was like breathing the air, and we’ve lost it in a few short decades, and we’re much the poorer for it. Reply Joseph S. Salemi September 18, 2024 Adam, I’m glad that you mentioned this. Poetry was part of the air that people breathed not that long ago. The work of Byron, Shelley, and Browning was very popular — in Byron’s case, he was practically the equivalent of a rock-star celebrity, and people crowded the bookstores to get the latest installments of “Don Juan” and other longer poems by him. Browning’s work was worshiped by The Browning Society, a collection of his fans. The same was true for some poets in Germany, Russia, and India, whose work was on the lips of not just scholars but the common man as well. My father loved to recite poems he had memorized in school: “Abou Ben Adhem,” “Horatius at the Bridge,” “Columbus,” and several long passages from Shakespeare’s plays, like the oration of Mark Antony, Portia’s speech on mercy, Hamlet’s soliloquy, Henry V’s address to his troops, the witches’ chant from Macbeth. And concerning FitzGerald’s English version of the Rubaiyat, my maternal grandfather loved it so much that he translated it into Italian and published it in one of his books. The Rubaiyat was wildly appreciated — so wildly that the English writer H.H. Munro often made fun of the book’s widespread popularity, and even wrote parodic versions of some of the quatrains in his short stories. That might as well have been a million years ago. Reply Margaret Coats September 23, 2024 Joe and Adam, you should know that poetry was being memorized in school so late as when I served as teaching fellow in the Shakespeare course at Harvard. It was a longstanding rule that students (yes, college undergraduates) learn 25 lines a week from the play being taught and discussed that week. I can testify that no student found this too much–even though they had to keep 75 lines in mind all the time because memorization was tested only every three weeks. They could choose whatever lines they liked, and I can also testify that they chose good lines. But along came a new Shakespeare lecturer who found this hopelessly burdensome, and did away with it. I could only think how much she (not Helen Vendler, of course) had robbed from the young who at that time had the job of filling their minds with value for the rest of their lives. Margaret Coats September 19, 2024 Adam, thank you for such a great comment. I’m very much pleased that the poem is not only an attractive portrait, but one that makes you wish to have known Helen Vendler. With regard to poetry memorized by earlier generations, I’m sure you’d like the article linked below, where Vendler describes her ideal of early education. I put a bit of this in my poem, with the statement that education means reading, but just take a look at how many ways (memorization is only one) she finds for children to read–and acquire the easy, pleasurable facility she considers essential to the humanities. I only wish I had read this before I began homeschooling. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2011/08/reading-is-elemental Reply Maria September 18, 2024 This is a beautiful tribute for someone who was special to you and who blessed you and others with her gifts of knowledge, scholarship and enthusiasm. Dear Margaret, thank you for blessing us with this heartfelt valediction . Reply Margaret Coats September 19, 2024 Maria, I very much appreciate your reading and comment. Helen Vendler was a special blessing to me, and equally or more so, I think, to many, many others. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Captcha loading...In order to pass the CAPTCHA please enable JavaScript. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
James Sale September 16, 2024 A beautiful poem, Margaret – a moving elegy and tribute; and I remember reading Helen V as an undergraduate and enjoying her critical works – though sadly now I don’t seem to have a book by her on my shelves. The kind of close reading and criticism she espoused in now massively out of fashion. Thanks for reminding me of a stellar spirit. Reply
Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 James, your early comments are always so very welcome, and today I’m especially glad to hear this poem is beautiful. It commemorates a beautiful spirit with whom I had the pleasure to work, and only wish we could have met more often in recent years. Helen Vendler’s style of criticism was uniquely capable of making many, many readers see the beauty in poetry. Reply
Warren Bonham September 16, 2024 Although it’s preposterous of me after having been introduced to Helen V only a few moments ago to think that I can presume to speak for her, I will do so anyway. I think she would have been carried away by the music and rhythm of your poem before likely being embarrassed by the moving tribute to her. Thanks for the great start to the day. Reply
Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 Yes, Warren, the music and the rhythm would have pleased her. I’m very happy to introduce you to Helen Vendler and a few of her memorable perspectives on poetry. Reply
Paul Freeman September 16, 2024 A worthy tribute, Margaret. We tend to think negatively of critics, but in Helen Vendler’s case, your words paint a picture of a highly and justly respected academic who loved her work, loved poetry and conveyed that love. Even the pictures tell this same story. Reply
Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 Thanks, Paul. Conveying the love of poetry meant very much to Helen. At one comfortable breathing spell during her last few years, she was able to conduct a summer program for high school teachers, in order to extend that work as far as possible. I’m glad you picked up on that aspect from my poem; always appreciate your reading. Reply
Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 Evan Mantyk, in relation to Paul Freeman’s comment, let me thank you for two good pictures of Vendler smiling. These are not easy to find, but my description of Helen as “she who had smiled to ponder poetry” is the simple truth of all the lectures I heard her give. Reply
Roy Eugene Peterson September 16, 2024 Helen Vendler must have held a special place in your heart to have earned such a magical and magnificent tribute. If you were not one of her students, I suspect she was still a mentor to your brilliant poetic skills. She would have been humbled and moved by your praise and caring. Reply
Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 She was a caring friend, Roy, long after we necessarily parted. I was not her student, but we shared an interest in poetry above other literature. As a graduate student, I had to specialize in a historical period, and therefore could not have Helen (who refused to specialize) as my advisor, but she chose me as one of the teaching fellows to conduct discussion sections for her large lecture class on “Poems, Poets, Poetry.” No other professor-lecturer ever came to listen to a discussion section. When I was homeschooling, she understood the value of that, and treated me as a friend and professional equal at a conference where she was the invited distinguished speaker. I started writing poetry seriously at a time when she was on leave because of illness, but she read my work anyway. I knew she would–she couldn’t resist poetry! And she knew I didn’t want her to make any effort beyond the reading. I benefit from having heard her “sprightly teaching” and from a poetic and critical spirit we seemed to share before we met. Reply
jd September 16, 2024 Thank you for this poetic introduction to a woman who certainly earned your excellently written praise. I will have to do a little exploration on my own now. By the way, Margaret, today I discovered a Jonathan Reid with the traditionalcatholicprayers.com site. I have the feeling he could be Father Carota’s Jonathan. Maybe it’s just a “feather” in my heart but… Reply
Margaret Coats September 16, 2024 Thank you, jd. This poem is an introduction to someone whose ideals and attitudes we as writers and readers can share and be uplifted by. I looked at the traditionalcatholicprayers site, which seems to be an excellent compilation of devotional material. Forgot to check whether there is contact information for Jonathan, but if not, there seems to be a rolling comment platform like ours here, that he is likely to notice. The similarity of the address to Father Carota’s suggests a connection. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi September 16, 2024 Vendler was a great critic — deeply learned, perceptive, articulate, and knowledgeable about many styles and types of poetic composition. She had also been trained in the formalism of the New Critic I. A. Richards, so she was very skilled at close reading. She had plenty of enemies — the controversy over her review of the anthology brought out by Rita Dove brought all of these enemies out of the woodwork. It was in the cards for the freak-scene types to hate her. Vendler had made her scholarly reputation at a time before the explosion of garbage art turned poetry into the clown-show that it is today, so she was well positioned to critique much of its fraudulence, from unassailable academic heights. She was an acute reader and insightful commentator, but she did at times place too much emphasis on a poet’s personal motivation, feelings, and beliefs. And she had the bad habit of over-explaining what she meant, in ways that suggested pomposity at times. But we all have our faults, don’t we? Reply
Margaret Coats September 17, 2024 Joe, thank you immensely for this perspective on Helen Vendler. I recall when you first learned I had worked with her, you remarked that she always had something good to say. In accord with her teaching about the elegy genre, I treat enemies and faults of the deceased lightly in this poem. You do the same, recalling just the controversy with Rita Dove, which was, as you say, an opportunity for all the others to emerge. I refer to the broad category of anti-intellectuals who would prefer there to be no serious critical analysis of poetry. They could have been “democrat” writers or readers pushing for plain language and/or gushing emotion as the pre-eminent feature in poems, but “demagogue” is fitting and more precise. For these, any explaining is overexplaining. We do all have our faults, so I’ll explain here part of my above poem that will be lost to readers who never hear the great Vendler lecture on the elegy, where an example poem is “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed” by Whitman for Lincoln. My first line adapts it to Vendler’s death in California. I make her a “genial star” in contrast to Whitman’s “great star,” and in both poems the moon drops. To me the moon represents poetry less bright without good criticism. This means less to anyone who has not heard Vendler read Whitman, and thus never felt like an American in 1865, standing near a railroad depot to see Lincoln’s funeral train pass. Yes, Whitman’s elegy is free verse that rambles on far too long, and no model for formal classical poetry. The allusion will work, I hope, for some who may read this. Thanks again for your attention and your comment. Reply
Daniel Kemper September 16, 2024 Wish I had more brain space available to praise this. I love reading these; I hate knowing the reason for reading. Selfish, I know, to want those now in such a much better place to be in this little disaster we call life, but there it is. Critics need to be acknowledged; it is an art as much as what they critique. Well done to bring it out, to remember her, and to contribute such a poem to the ongoing tradition. Reply
Margaret Coats September 17, 2024 Thanks, Daniel, I’m glad you love reading such poems despite the sad reason for them. Memorial elegies can deliver a fuller “sense of person” than poems of praise during life, or of praise for a long-departed figure–especially in a poem like this that has to be an introduction for many readers. You are so right that critics need to be acknowledged. They help readers to read, and they help writers to understand what they are doing. Here I say Helen Vendler thought that what poets do is “always prize condensed, unusual language.” True (generally) but too universal to interpret one poem or one certain poet’s style. The application to actual reading is the work. I happily contribute to remembrance of one critic for whom this work was a clearly chosen delight. Reply
Brian A. Yapko September 17, 2024 Margaret, this is a splendid tribute poem! I’m completely ignorant concerning critic Helen Vendler, but based on this valediction I’d like to know more. Her quotes certainly grab me as does your skilled portrait of a perceptive, articulate woman who loved poetry. If she was your friend, I offer my condolences. The poem’s craftsmanship is obvious so I’d like to address some of the content: I’m intrigued by the stanza in which you quote her: “Science, she said, was key to all she did, Exactitude and balance in equations, With nothing graphed on her Cartesian grid But poetry, all centuries, all nations. How does one apply scientific methodology to the reading of poetry? I’m sure there must be truth to this but cannot articulate exactly why. Is this merely a function of scansion and explication? Noting meter, form, use of poetic devices? Or is there something deeper in that Cartesian grid? I also am intrigued by the statement empowering the reader: “In poetry, she taught, you are the voice.” I’m not sure I agree with this. I rather think the reader – while bringing himself or herself to the poem – nevertheless is listening to and interpreting the poet’s voice. I believe that subjective readings of poetry are inevitable. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that an objective reading of poetry is impossible. But to me it is something of a dialogue between the poet and the reader. Perhaps that’s compatible with Ms. Vendler’s point of view…? Lest I get too far off track, let me just remark that I find your poem quite beautiful and fondly respectful of someone I would have enjoyed conversing with. And ending with that heliotrope in an expanded 5 line stanza was inspired. A fitting farewell. Reply
Mike Bryant September 17, 2024 Brian, Helen explains how science informs her critiques: You have to be exact in all your writing in science: your flow chart has to go from beginning to end with all the steps accounted for, and all the equations have to balance out. Evidence has to be presented for each step of your reasoning. Science is very beautiful in its structural shapes, too. Organic chemistry pleased me almost more than anything else, because of the three-dimensionality of the assemblage of the molecules and the complication of the organic structures. It was just like seeing the structures of poetry: a molecular branch could go this way, or that way, there could be all sorts of wonderful, complex arrangements. I loved those geometric arrangements, as I love them in poetry. – Helen Vendler Reply
Margaret Coats September 18, 2024 Brian, thank you for your sympathy. I seem to feel this loss more and more. And thanks for commending the poetic craft of the elegy. I know Helen herself would be charmed by the sprig of heliotrope in the final line. Laying a flower on the grave is classic for this kind of poem. With regard to Helen’s science, Mike Bryant has graciously provided quotes that show how she thought of chemistry as a metaphor for poetry. The application of it to interpretation is manifold. First, in close reading, neglect nothing. You express an understanding of that, and it goes along with Helen’s ability to discern “play at many levels of language.” Another is that “evidence” for interpretation is the words of the poem. Period. Joe Salemi says above that Helen paid more attention than he would to the poet’s “personal motivation, feelings, and beliefs.” But why? Only to determine how words (that have more than one sense) are being used in the poem, not to introduce new reactants or products into the equation. All this, still, is not truly an application of scientific methodology to reading. Education in science (Helen’s in chemistry, mine in physics) enabled us to see that language and literature have many variables that defy the would-be scientific approach of structuralism. Critical approaches coming after structuralism recognized its failure, and went in directions that can only be called disorderly. Helen maintained highly orderly critical writing, which is where her scientific skills in interpretation shine. Her writing shows frequent touches of lab report logic and style, if I may say so. This is unknown to most literary critics. Its balance and clarity are remarkable. To balance the “equations” in that “Science” stanza, I put in “nations,” to show Helen’s claim of all poetry (and nothing else) as her field (her Cartesian grid in my metaphor). You quoted the whole “all” stanza (science as key and global poetry as field of her work). In practice, she wrote mostly of English and American poetry, but read poetry and criticism in several other languages. Brian, you understand as well that her assertion “You are the voice” is meant to empower the reader. Helen wanted students and others to enter in, read aloud, and feel themselves as the speaker in a poem. She specifically said not to act as if overhearing what the poet says in his chosen speaker. That can scare some poets. And I do recall an instance when she said almost offhand (if a lecturer can say anything offhand in a Victorian theater of a lecture hall) that a writer who wants only a single interpretation of his poem should keep it to himself. You understand that too. She also said, more reflectively, that the poet who finishes and publishes a poem then becomes a reader and interpreter of his own work, with more information about it than other readers, but not a legislator concerning how to read. Again, scary to some poets. Helen Vendler was out to give poetry a wealth of readers acting as interpreters. The limits on this are her own: base interpretations on the words of the poem, and when asking questions about it, follow the guidance the poem itself provides. To your idea of a dialogue between poet and reader, Helen would say yes, in this sense: you as poet contribute the speech act of the poem; the reader accepts it as terms under which he responds by interpreting it. This may sound like “reader response” criticism, but is different if you know the school of literary criticism by that name. Vendler’s mode is more direct between individuals which, I hope, pleases you. Reply
Mike Bryant September 17, 2024 Margaret, Helen Vendler was a phenomenon. I learned of her years ago because Susan brought “The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets” with her when she came to Texas. It was required reading for her literature degree and I have learned much from it. I appreciate you highlighting how her skills in the hard sciences improve her critiques on poetry. I think she also had a degree in chemistry. The only thing that has me wondering is the “My ignorance / Equals your knowledge… ” quote. Did Helen Vendler say that? I used to be a huge fan of that rascal Isaac Asimov, and it sounds like a quote from one of his essays. Helen sets a high standard for any critic. She was always concerned that she had the poet’s intent exactly right. ”What I would hope is that if Keats read what I had written about the ode ‘To Autumn,’ he would say, ‘Yes, that is the way I wanted it to be thought of.’ And ‘Yes, you have unfolded what I had implied,’ or something like that. It would not strike the poet, I hope, that there was a discrepancy between my description of the work and the poet’s own conception of it. I wouldn’t be happy if a poet read what I had written and said, ‘What a peculiar thing to say about this work of mine.’” – Helen Vendler Reply
Margaret Coats September 19, 2024 Thanks, Mike! It’s good to get a comment from our busy moderator. As I said to Brian above, I appreciate your bringing up Helen Vendler’s quote on her metaphorical association of chemistry and poetry. I’m rather slow on answering at present because of the nearing wrap-up of the haiku contest. About that quote that has you wondering, it’s Helen’s opponents, “dull anti-intellectuals” who say it. Look back at the stanza and I think you’ll get it. That is, as I told Joe Salemi, the only place where I mention her many enemies. The anti-intellectuals are those among them who don’t want analysis based on knowledge to be applied (in this case, specifically to poetry), and thus they claim ignorance as its equivalent. We see plenty of “democratic demagogues” like that in many subjects. In your quote of Helen about her interpretation of Keats, please notice that she doesn’t use the word “intent.” Seeking a poet’s intent is not her critical methodology. Her interpretation is hers, never exactly what the poet might have thought in some impossible psychological reconstruction. She hopes, rather, that a poet would have been comfortable with what she says, given necessary differences between minds and situations. When Seamus Heaney said Helen could “second-guess the sixth sense of a poem,” he spoke of what her unique talent could find in a poem that even the poet might not have seen or explicitly intended. That happens because the poet’s material (language) belongs not to him as paint and canvas belong to a painter, but to everyone who speaks and understands the language. Jorie Graham said Helen’s unsolicited review of one of her books had revealed to her what she was doing in poetry. I mentioned that remark to one of our fellow poets, who replied that we need to learn what we’re doing. That kind of criticism is valuable. Helen’s style of criticism begins not with poetry per se, and not with the poet, but with the poem. I dealt with this somewhat in answering Brian’s question about “You are the voice,” which is certainly one of the quotes most often heard from the quotable Vendler. It’s how she taught students to be better readers by not fearing to become interpreters. In lecture, she interpreted poems, and began to build up a knowledge of poets from their poems. In discussion sections, we teaching fellows were not to lecture or interpret, but to ask questions and get the students to interpret. What questions? The ones each poem suggests! Helen didn’t divide her syllabus by poet, but by genre. We can’t ask good questions unless we discern what kind of poem it is. You see that in the Shakespeare sonnet commentary. I put the book into my second stanza above not just because Helen died on Shakespeare’s birthday, but because she felt satisfied at having read each sonnet in a individual way never before done. I describe it as “call and response” between her and Shakespeare–each step of their dance set by one particular poem. Since her book was published, it has been seriously proposed that not all the sonnets are Shakespeare’s. That may very well be true. The quality varies, and the publisher responsible for the collection may have put together everything he thought would sell. If there are works by various poets in the collection, that does not change the value of Helen’s interpretations. They focus on poems first! Reply
Mike Bryant September 20, 2024 Margaret, I definitely agree with you about “dull anti-intellectuals.” There is a huge cult of pseudo-intellectuals in the United States. It was planted and encouraged in our universities after World War II by our government’s installation of professors dedicated to the Frankfurt School. This strain of humanist collectivism and snobbery is a growing thread that has wound its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the freedom-killing notion that the warped wisdom of government educated and supported experts must trump common sense. So yes, Helen Vendler was definitely attacked by those “dull anti-intellectual,” critical theory spouting demagogues. As for “intent,” you’re right. She wasn’t talking about intent. She said, “It would not strike the poet, I hope, that there was a discrepancy between my description of the work and the poet’s own conception of it.” She sets a high standard for all poetry critics. The National Endowment for the Humanities has a great post about Helen Vendler here: https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/helen-vendler-biography After the introduction there are four clickable headings – Appreciation, Excerpts, Interview, and Lecture Text. Under the first heading, “Appreciation” is a short essay by Henri Cole titled “The Poem Unfolded” in which Cole gives us a loving look at Helen Vendler from the perspective of colleague, friend and admirer. It is well worth reading. A couple of selections from Cole’s remembrance: In analyzing any poem, you are like a conductor studying a score, seeing the whole and at the same time noticing the compelling detail, as the long arc of linked sounds displays individual ravishing moments. – Helen Vendler 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. -Helen Vendler Reply
Margaret Coats September 27, 2024 Yes, Mike, you are correct about anti-intellectuals as those who fail to think for themselves, and who accept politically promoted points of view without question. Interestingly enough, the leading “thinkers” who want to prescribe dogma to be held by others, are often poor at thinking themselves. Their aim is to lead and rule, without exercising powers of the mind. Thus we may hear such “thinkers” praise the “primitives,” or uncivilized societies and uneducated individuals as equal to, or even superior to, those with highly developed culture. Poetry may be valued by such persons, but mainly for its simplicity and utility in maintaining social control. There is no real value for poetry as art, and thus no value in literary criticism that explains and appreciates art. Reply
Margaret Coats September 27, 2024 And thank you very much for pointing out easily available resources that can add to appreciation of Helen Vendler’s unique accomplishments as a critic of poetry. Reply
Mike Bryant September 27, 2024 Your welcome! Her expositions of Shakespeare’s sonnets are astonishing.
Stephen M. Dickey September 17, 2024 I’m tempted to think even Harold Bloom didn’t get a eulogy of this class. I particularly value Vendler’s book on Shakespeare’s sonnets, which comes with a CD of her reading selections in the back cover, an oral legacy now. Reply
Margaret Coats September 19, 2024 Stephen, this comment almost made me cry, to think that my elegy is such a classy eulogy. For Helen Vendler, it had to be a poem, while for Harold Bloom, it must be a Gedenkschrift that he probably has by now. He was a critic of poetry, but also of education and civilization. Helen’s book on Shakespeare’s sonnets will probably turn out to be the most widely useful and maybe the longest used of her books. She was justifiably proud of it in particular, which is why it figures in the second stanza of my poem above. Reply
Adam Sedia September 18, 2024 I like how you set up the poem: before you mourn, you tell us something about its subject. By the end, I felt as though I knew her. You conveyed in a few stanzas more than what a 5,000-word essay could. I wish I had known of Ms. Vendler while she was alive. The quotations you give are spot-on, particularly the one you use as the second epigraph. I am reminded of my grandfather, who had only a high school education, reciting lines of poetry at times they seemed to fit (“The Rubaiyat” was a favorite of his). That’s something that for earlier generations was like breathing the air, and we’ve lost it in a few short decades, and we’re much the poorer for it. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi September 18, 2024 Adam, I’m glad that you mentioned this. Poetry was part of the air that people breathed not that long ago. The work of Byron, Shelley, and Browning was very popular — in Byron’s case, he was practically the equivalent of a rock-star celebrity, and people crowded the bookstores to get the latest installments of “Don Juan” and other longer poems by him. Browning’s work was worshiped by The Browning Society, a collection of his fans. The same was true for some poets in Germany, Russia, and India, whose work was on the lips of not just scholars but the common man as well. My father loved to recite poems he had memorized in school: “Abou Ben Adhem,” “Horatius at the Bridge,” “Columbus,” and several long passages from Shakespeare’s plays, like the oration of Mark Antony, Portia’s speech on mercy, Hamlet’s soliloquy, Henry V’s address to his troops, the witches’ chant from Macbeth. And concerning FitzGerald’s English version of the Rubaiyat, my maternal grandfather loved it so much that he translated it into Italian and published it in one of his books. The Rubaiyat was wildly appreciated — so wildly that the English writer H.H. Munro often made fun of the book’s widespread popularity, and even wrote parodic versions of some of the quatrains in his short stories. That might as well have been a million years ago. Reply
Margaret Coats September 23, 2024 Joe and Adam, you should know that poetry was being memorized in school so late as when I served as teaching fellow in the Shakespeare course at Harvard. It was a longstanding rule that students (yes, college undergraduates) learn 25 lines a week from the play being taught and discussed that week. I can testify that no student found this too much–even though they had to keep 75 lines in mind all the time because memorization was tested only every three weeks. They could choose whatever lines they liked, and I can also testify that they chose good lines. But along came a new Shakespeare lecturer who found this hopelessly burdensome, and did away with it. I could only think how much she (not Helen Vendler, of course) had robbed from the young who at that time had the job of filling their minds with value for the rest of their lives.
Margaret Coats September 19, 2024 Adam, thank you for such a great comment. I’m very much pleased that the poem is not only an attractive portrait, but one that makes you wish to have known Helen Vendler. With regard to poetry memorized by earlier generations, I’m sure you’d like the article linked below, where Vendler describes her ideal of early education. I put a bit of this in my poem, with the statement that education means reading, but just take a look at how many ways (memorization is only one) she finds for children to read–and acquire the easy, pleasurable facility she considers essential to the humanities. I only wish I had read this before I began homeschooling. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2011/08/reading-is-elemental Reply
Maria September 18, 2024 This is a beautiful tribute for someone who was special to you and who blessed you and others with her gifts of knowledge, scholarship and enthusiasm. Dear Margaret, thank you for blessing us with this heartfelt valediction . Reply
Margaret Coats September 19, 2024 Maria, I very much appreciate your reading and comment. Helen Vendler was a special blessing to me, and equally or more so, I think, to many, many others. Reply
