An introduction to poetry by a renowned critic and teacher. Recognized as one of America's greatest literary critics, Helen Vendler is a frequent reviewer of poetry for
The New Yorker and
The New York Review of Books. Poems, Poets, Poetry reflects decades of teaching to thousands of undergraduates in the core poetry course that she has taught at Harvard since 1981.
A unique and effective approach to reading and writing about poetry. In Part One, a comprehensive introduction to poetry, Vendler reads 12 poems through twice — first to tie the poems to real life events (thus demystifying them), and then to reveal how poetic language transforms those events into art. In Part Two, she illuminates ways to think and write about both individual works and groups of poems.
A diverse anthology of more than 285 poems by more than 150 poets. Spanning eight centuries of English-language poetry, the anthology in Part Three offers a broad choice of canonical and contemporary selections that allow instructors to shape their courses as they prefer.
Five helpful appendices expand on technical aspects of poetry. While discussion of technical terminology has been kept to a minimum in the text, further explanations (with examples) of prosody, grammar, speech-acts, rhetorical devices, and lyric subgenres are available in the appendices.
An Instructor's Manual prepared by Helen Vendler herself discusses each chapter and several of its poems from a teacher's point of view. The manual also provides proven exercises and tips from her own classroom experience.