Vendler, Helen 1933-

The art of Shakespeare's sonnets by Helen Vendler ( Book )
24 editions published between 1997 and 1999 in English and German and held by 2,004 libraries worldwide
In detailed commentaries on Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, Vendler reveals previously unperceived imaginative and stylistic features of the poems, pointing out not only new levels of import in particular lines, but also the ways in which the four parts of each sonnet work together to enact emotion and create dynamic effect. The commentaries - presented alongside the complete text of each poem, as printed in the 1609 edition and in a modernized version - offer fresh perspectives on the individual poems, and, taken together, provide a full picture of Shakespeare's techniques as a working poet. With the help of Vendler's acute eye, we gain an appreciation of "Shakespeare's elated variety of invention, his ironic capacity, his astonishing refinement of technique, and, above all, the reach of his skeptical imaginative intent." Vendler's understanding of the sonnets informs her readings on an accompanying compact disk, which is bound with the book. This recorded presentation of a selection of the poems, in giving aural form to Shakespeare's words, heightens our awareness of voice in lyric and adds the dimension of sound to poems too often registered merely as written words.

The Harvard book of contemporary American poetry ( Book )
7 editions published between 1985 and 1995 in English and held by 1,882 libraries worldwide
An anthology of American poetry containing the work of major poets, introducing many newer writers, and including brief biographies of the poets in an appendix.

Part of nature, part of us : modern American poets by Helen Vendler ( Book )
15 editions published between 1980 and 1996 in English and held by 1,815 libraries worldwide
A collection of book reviews and essays on more than forty modern American poets.

On extended wings: Wallace Stevens' longer poems by Helen Vendler ( Book )
18 editions published between 1969 and 2004 in English and Undetermined and held by 1,481 libraries worldwide

The odes of John Keats by Helen Vendler ( Book )
14 editions published between 1983 and 2003 in English and held by 1,420 libraries worldwide

Coming of age as a poet : Milton, Keats, Eliot, Plath by Helen Vendler ( Book )
12 editions published between 2003 and 2004 in English and held by 1,330 libraries worldwide
"To find a personal style is, for a writer, to become adult; and to write one's first "perfect" poem - a poem that wholly and successfully embodies that style - is to come of age as a poet. By looking at the precedents, circumstances, and artistry of the first perfect poems composed by John Milton, John Keats, T.S. Eliot, and Sylvia Plath, Coming of Age as a Poet offers rare insight into this mysterious process, and into the indispensable period of learning and experimentation that precedes such poetic achievement." "Milton's L'Allegro, Keats's On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and Plath's The Colossus are the poems that Helen Vendler considers, exploring each as an accession to poetic confidence, mastery, and maturity. In meticulous and sympathetic readings of the poems, and with reference to earlier youthful compositions, she delineates the context and the terms of each poet's self-discovery - and illuminates the private, intense, and ultimately heroic effort and endurance that precede the creation of any memorable poem."--Jacket.

Voices & visions : the poet in America ( Book )
9 editions published between 1987 and 1989 in English and held by 1,326 libraries worldwide

Seamus Heaney by Helen Vendler ( Book )
18 editions published between 1998 and 2000 in English and held by 1,320 libraries worldwide
Helen Vendler traces Heaney's invention as it evolves from his beginnings in Death of a Naturalist (1966) through his most recent volume, The Spirit Level (1996). In sections entitled "Second Thoughts," she considers an often neglected but crucial part of Heaney's evolving talent: self-revision. Here we see how later poems return to the themes or genres of the earlier volumes, and reconceive them in light of the poet's later attitudes or techniques Vendler surveys all of Heaney's efforts in the classical forms - elegy, genre-scene, sonnet, parable, confessional poem, poem of perception - and brings to light his aesthetic and moral attitudes.

The music of what happens : poems, poets, critics by Helen Vendler ( Book )
10 editions published between 1988 and 1995 in English and held by 1,135 libraries worldwide

Dickinson : selected poems and commentaries by Emily Dickinson ( Book )
2 editions published in 2010 in English and held by 1,030 libraries worldwide
In selecting these poems for commentary the author chooses to exhibit many aspects of Dickinson's work as a poet, from her first person poems to the poems of grand abstraction, from her ecstatic verses to her unparalleled depictions of emotional numbness, from her comic anecdotes to her painful poems of aftermath. Included here are many expected favorites as well as more complex and less often anthologized poems. Taken together, this selection reveals Emily Dickinson's development as a poet, her astonishing range, and her revelation of what Wordsworth called the history and science of feeling. In accompanying commentaries the author offers a deeper acquaintance with Dickinson the writer, the inventive conceiver and linguistic shaper of her perennial themes. All of Dickinson's preoccupations, death, religion, love, the natural world, the nature of thought, are explored here in detail, but the author always takes care to emphasize the poet's startling imagination and the ingenuity of her linguistic invention. Whether exploring less familiar poems or favorites we thought we knew, the author reveals Dickinson as a master of a revolutionary verse language of immediacy and power. Here, the author turns her skills as a critic to 150 selected poems of Emily Dickinson. She serves as a guide, considering both stylistic and imaginative feature of the poems.