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The Grand Dame of Poetry Criticism
No one has had the public impact of the rigorously untheoretical Helen Vendler
http://chronicle.com
Section: Research & Publishing
Volume 51, Issue 21, Page A14


Ms. Vendler does not do e-mail. Somehow this is not surprising. Prolonged reading of her work conveys the sense of a mind utterly devoted to poetry, a woman not at all shy about her bookishness. "I am not interested in groups," Ms. Vendler said during a panel discussion in New York five years ago. "I have never joined a political party. I have never voted. I have never registered to vote. I have never gone to a church. I have never belonged to a club. I've never belonged to anything." For the journalist seeking to interview her, it is something of a relief to learn that she has a telephone.

and . . .

She says she "wanders the earth" asking people if they know of any major 30-year-old poets she should read. "And they all say, 'Not really.' I don't know if we're in a lull. There are competent poets, but nobody taking the world by storm the way Ginsberg did, or Lowell did. I worry about it."


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