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April062006

There Is Nothing Like a Dame Helen

Filed under: Eustace Google

And speaking of Vendler, I was happy to see that my eminent friend Scott McLemee covered the subject last year, and well. Scott's meditation on the lady so powerful no one will speak of her to The New York Times in a voice above a whisper (preferably at a pay phone with a handkerchief and a transformer):


In literary conversation, she is sometimes called "Dame Helen" -- a nickname that can be affectionate or sarcastic, occasionally a little of both. No American critic writing about contemporary poetry has quite the prominence of Helen Vendler, the A. Kingsley Porter university professor at Harvard University. Over the past four decades, her reviews and essays have introduced readers to such poets as Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, and Seamus Heaney.

"As a literary gatekeeper, especially when she was reviewing for The New Yorker," says Hank Lazer, a poet, critic, and administrator at the University of Alabama, "Helen Vendler could really put someone in the literary spotlight -- have them immediately be in the serious running for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award nominations, for major-press publication, even for major academic positions. It is an ability she would publicly deny having, but virtually no one else has wielded that sort of power."

Hence the respect for Dame Helen. Hence, too, the grumbling. Whole sectors of the poetry world have complained about the limits of her sensibility. She doesn't like experimentation, one complaint goes. Her attitude toward poetry is too academic, says another. At the same time, somewhat paradoxically, literary scholars often consider Ms. Vendler far out of touch with their profession. Continued.

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