fbpx
Wikipedia

Helen Vendler

April 25, 2024

Helen Hennessy Vendler (April 30, 1933 – April 23, 2024) was an American literary critic.[1]

Helen Vendler
Born
Helen Hennessy

(1933-04-30)April 30, 1933
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedApril 23, 2024(2024-04-23) (aged 90)
Laguna Niguel, California, U.S.
AwardsAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters, 1993
Academic background
Alma materEmmanuel College (AB)
Harvard University (PhD)
Academic work
InstitutionsHarvard University
Boston University
Cornell University
Swarthmore College
Smith College
Main interestsPoetry, poetics, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney

Life and career edit

Helen Hennessy was born on April 30, 1933, in Boston, Massachusetts, to George Hennessy and Helen née Newman Hennessy.[2]: 399  She was the second of three children.[3] Her parents encouraged her to read poems as a child. Vendler's father taught Spanish, French, and Italian at a high school, while her mother had taught in a primary school before marriage.[3][4][5] Vendler attended Emmanuel College over the Boston Girls' Latin School and Radcliffe College because her parents would not let her enroll in "secular education".[4][5] She received an A. B. from Emmanuel.[2]: 399 

Vendler was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, attending the Université catholique de Louvain from 1954 to 1955,[2]: 399  for mathematics. But while traveling to the university, she decided that she would rather study English than math and the Fulbright commission allowed her to switch her focus to literature. Upon returning to the U.S., Vendler took 12 undergraduate courses in English at Boston University in a year and in 1956 entered Harvard University as a graduate student in English. The department's chair told her within a week of entry that "we don't want any women here", while Perry Miller refused her entry in a seminar he led on Herman Melville despite viewing her as his "finest student", according to The New York Times. Other Harvard professors offered her more support, notably I. A. Richards. Vendler was offered a job teaching in Harvard's English department in 1959, making her the first woman the department offered a job as an instructor. She declined.[4]

Vendler graduated with a Ph.D. in English and American literature the next year.[3] She began teaching English at Cornell University in 1960,[2]: 399  after her husband at the time, Zeno Vendler, moved to teach there.[4] She left Cornell in 1963 and spent several years at various other institutions, including a year (1963–1964) teaching at Haverford College and Swarthmore College, two years (1964–1966) as an assistant professor at Boston University, and another two (1966–1968) as full professor. Vendler spent a year as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Bordeaux. After this, she was Boston University's director of graduate studies in the English department from 1970 to 1975 and again from 1978 to 1979.[2]: 399 

Vendler was a professor of English at Harvard University from 1984 until her death; from 1981 to 1984 she taught alternating semesters at Harvard and Boston University.[6] She has said that she retained her affiliation with BU for several years to ensure that she wasn't "some little token person" at Harvard.[4] In 1985, Vendler was named the William R. Kenan Professor of English and American Literature and Language. From 1987 to 1992, she served as associate dean of arts and sciences. In 1990, she was appointed the A. Kingsley Porter University Professor.[2]: 399  In 1992, Vendler received an honorary Litt. D. from Bates College.[7] She was a Charles Stewart Parnell fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1995, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene in 1997.[8]

Vendler delivered the 2000 Warton Lecture on English Poetry.[9] In 2004, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.[10][11] Her lecture, "The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar",[12] used poems by Wallace Stevens[13] to argue for the role of the arts (as opposed to history and philosophy) in the study of humanities.[14] In 2006, The New York Times called Vendler "the leading poetry critic in America" and credited her work with helping "establish or secure the reputations" of poets including Jorie Graham, Seamus Heaney, and Rita Dove.[4]

Vendler wrote books on Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, and Seamus Heaney.[6] She was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.[15][16][17] She was also a judge for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1974, 1976, 1978, 1986) and the National Book Award for Poetry (1972).[2]: 399 

Personal life and death edit

Helen Vendler was married to Zeno Vendler from 1960 to 1963;[18] the couple had one child.[4]

Vendler died at her home in Laguna Niguel, California, on April 23, 2024, at the age of 90.[19]

Bibliography edit

  • Yeats's Vision and the Later Plays (1963)[20]
  • On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems, Harvard University Press (1969)
  • I. A. Richards: Essays in His Honor (1973) editor with Reuben Brower and John Hollander
  • The Poetry of George Herbert, Harvard University Press (1975)
  • Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets, Harvard University Press (1980)
  • "What We have Loved, Others Will Love" (1980)
  • Modern American Poets (1981)
  • Stevens: Poems (1982)
  • The Odes of John Keats, Harvard University Press (1983)
  • The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry, Harvard University Press (1985) editor
  • The Faber Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1986)
  • Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen out of Desire, Harvard University Press (1986)
  • Voices and Visions: The Poet in America (1987)
  • The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets, Critics, Harvard University Press (1988)
  • Poems by W. B. Yeats Selected and with an introduction by Helen Vendler ([1]), Arion Press (1990)
  • The Given and the Made: Strategies of Poetic Redefinition, Harvard University Press (1995)
  • Herman Melville: Selected Poems selected and with an introduction by Helen Vendler, Arion Press (1995)
  • John Keats, 1795–1995: With a Catalogue of the Harvard Keats Collection, Harvard University Press (1995) with Leslie A. Morris and William H. Bond
  • The Breaking of Style: Hopkins, Heaney, Graham, Harvard University Press (1995)
  • The Given and the Made: Strategies of Poetic Redefinition (1995)
  • Poems - Poets - Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology (1996)
  • Soul Says: On Recent Poetry, Harvard University Press (1996) essays
  • The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Harvard University Press (1997)
  • Seamus Heaney, Harvard University Press (1998)
  • Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (2003) editor
  • Coming of Age as a Poet: Milton, Keats, Eliot, Plath Harvard University Press(2003)
  • Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Harvard University Press (2004)
  • Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery (2005)
  • Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, Harvard University Press (2007)
  • Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill (2010)
  • Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries' (2010)
  • The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: Essays on Poets and Poetry (2015)[21]

Notes edit

  1. ^ Harvard Gazette, "Faust named University Professor" 2018-12-18 at the Wayback Machine Harvard Gazette, December 17, 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Matthews, Tracey (2005). Contemporary authors new revision series. Gale. ISBN 978-1-4144-0538-4.
  3. ^ a b c "Helen Vendler". The National Endowment for the Humanities. from the original on 2022-09-23. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Donadio, Rachel (2006-12-10). "The Closest Reader". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. from the original on 2022-09-12. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  5. ^ a b Simic, Charles. "The Incomparable Critic". The New York Review of Books. ISSN 0028-7504. from the original on 2022-09-12. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  6. ^ a b Joel A. Getz, "Vendler Accepts English Dept. Appointment," 2012-10-04 at the Wayback Machine Harvard Crimson, December 10, 1984.
  7. ^ "List of Honorary Degree Recipients". 5 April 2016. from the original on 2020-01-11. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  8. ^ "Honorary Fellows". from the original on 2023-02-04. Retrieved 2023-08-07.
  9. ^ Vendler, Helen (2001). "Wallace Stevens: Hypotheses and Contradictions" (PDF). Proceedings of the British Academy. 111: 225–244. (PDF) from the original on 2022-06-18. Retrieved 2021-03-22. (See Wallace Stevens.)
  10. ^ Jefferson Lecturers 2011-10-20 at the Wayback Machine at NEH Website (retrieved January 22, 2009).
  11. ^ Joshua D. Gottlieb, "Vendler Tapped for National Lecture," Harvard Crimson, March 12, 2004.
  12. ^ Helen Vendler, "The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar" 2019-04-12 at the Wayback Machine, text of Jefferson Lecture at NEH website.
  13. ^ See for example her remarks about Stevens's Harmonium and its various poems, such as Le Monocle de Mon Oncle and Bantam in Pine Woods
  14. ^ Sam Teller, "Vendler Advocates Larger Role for Arts in Academia," 2006-02-16 at the Wayback Machine Harvard Crimson, March 15, 2005.
  15. ^ (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 10 January 2011.
  16. ^ "Helen Hennessy Vendler". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. from the original on 2022-03-28. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
  17. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. from the original on 2024-04-24. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
  18. ^ Current Biography Yearbook. H.W. Wilson Company. 1986. p. 584. from the original on 2024-04-24. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  19. ^ Marquard, Bryan. "Helen Vendler, a towering presence in poetry criticism, dies at 90". The Boston Globe. from the original on April 24, 2024. Retrieved April 23, 2024.
  20. ^ O’Donoghue, Bernard. "Helen Vendler. Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form". Oxford Academic. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  21. ^ Vendler, Helen. "Author of Poems, Poets, Poetry". Biography and List of Works. Retrieved 24 April 2024.

External links edit

  • Invisible Listeners Book (Princeton University Press)
  • "The Closest Reader." (New York Times Profile)
  • Helen Vendler author page and archive from The New York Review of Books
  • Vendler audio interview on the friendship and correspondence between poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
  • Henri Cole (Winter 1996). "Helen Vendler, The Art of Criticism No. 3". The Paris Review. Winter 1996 (141).
  • Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on January 22, 2003. Audio file 1 hr 20 mins. Discussion on W. B. Yeats and poetic forms
  • [usurped], review of Dickinson in The Oxonian Review

April 25, 2024
helen, vendler, helen, hennessy, vendler, april, 1933, april, 2024, american, literary, critic, bornhelen, hennessy, 1933, april, 1933boston, massachusetts, diedapril, 2024, 2024, aged, laguna, niguel, california, awardsamerican, academy, arts, letters, 1993ac. Helen Hennessy Vendler April 30 1933 April 23 2024 was an American literary critic 1 Helen VendlerBornHelen Hennessy 1933 04 30 April 30 1933Boston Massachusetts U S DiedApril 23 2024 2024 04 23 aged 90 Laguna Niguel California U S AwardsAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters 1993Academic backgroundAlma materEmmanuel College AB Harvard University PhD Academic workInstitutionsHarvard UniversityBoston UniversityCornell UniversitySwarthmore CollegeSmith CollegeMain interestsPoetry poetics John Keats Emily Dickinson Wallace Stevens W B Yeats Seamus Heaney Contents 1 Life and career 2 Personal life and death 3 Bibliography 4 Notes 5 External linksLife and career editHelen Hennessy was born on April 30 1933 in Boston Massachusetts to George Hennessy and Helen nee Newman Hennessy 2 399 She was the second of three children 3 Her parents encouraged her to read poems as a child Vendler s father taught Spanish French and Italian at a high school while her mother had taught in a primary school before marriage 3 4 5 Vendler attended Emmanuel College over the Boston Girls Latin School and Radcliffe College because her parents would not let her enroll in secular education 4 5 She received an A B from Emmanuel 2 399 Vendler was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship attending the Universite catholique de Louvain from 1954 to 1955 2 399 for mathematics But while traveling to the university she decided that she would rather study English than math and the Fulbright commission allowed her to switch her focus to literature Upon returning to the U S Vendler took 12 undergraduate courses in English at Boston University in a year and in 1956 entered Harvard University as a graduate student in English The department s chair told her within a week of entry that we don t want any women here while Perry Miller refused her entry in a seminar he led on Herman Melville despite viewing her as his finest student according to The New York Times Other Harvard professors offered her more support notably I A Richards Vendler was offered a job teaching in Harvard s English department in 1959 making her the first woman the department offered a job as an instructor She declined 4 Vendler graduated with a Ph D in English and American literature the next year 3 She began teaching English at Cornell University in 1960 2 399 after her husband at the time Zeno Vendler moved to teach there 4 She left Cornell in 1963 and spent several years at various other institutions including a year 1963 1964 teaching at Haverford College and Swarthmore College two years 1964 1966 as an assistant professor at Boston University and another two 1966 1968 as full professor Vendler spent a year as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Bordeaux After this she was Boston University s director of graduate studies in the English department from 1970 to 1975 and again from 1978 to 1979 2 399 Vendler was a professor of English at Harvard University from 1984 until her death from 1981 to 1984 she taught alternating semesters at Harvard and Boston University 6 She has said that she retained her affiliation with BU for several years to ensure that she wasn t some little token person at Harvard 4 In 1985 Vendler was named the William R Kenan Professor of English and American Literature and Language From 1987 to 1992 she served as associate dean of arts and sciences In 1990 she was appointed the A Kingsley Porter University Professor 2 399 In 1992 Vendler received an honorary Litt D from Bates College 7 She was a Charles Stewart Parnell fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge in 1995 and was elected an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene in 1997 8 Vendler delivered the 2000 Warton Lecture on English Poetry 9 In 2004 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture the federal government s highest honor for achievement in the humanities 10 11 Her lecture The Ocean the Bird and the Scholar 12 used poems by Wallace Stevens 13 to argue for the role of the arts as opposed to history and philosophy in the study of humanities 14 In 2006 The New York Times called Vendler the leading poetry critic in America and credited her work with helping establish or secure the reputations of poets including Jorie Graham Seamus Heaney and Rita Dove 4 Vendler wrote books on Emily Dickinson W B Yeats Wallace Stevens John Keats and Seamus Heaney 6 She was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society 15 16 17 She was also a judge for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1974 1976 1978 1986 and the National Book Award for Poetry 1972 2 399 Personal life and death editHelen Vendler was married to Zeno Vendler from 1960 to 1963 18 the couple had one child 4 Vendler died at her home in Laguna Niguel California on April 23 2024 at the age of 90 19 Bibliography editYeats s Vision and the Later Plays 1963 20 On Extended Wings Wallace Stevens Longer Poems Harvard University Press 1969 I A Richards Essays in His Honor 1973 editor with Reuben Brower and John Hollander The Poetry of George Herbert Harvard University Press 1975 Part of Nature Part of Us Modern American Poets Harvard University Press 1980 What We have Loved Others Will Love 1980 Modern American Poets 1981 Stevens Poems 1982 The Odes of John Keats Harvard University Press 1983 The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry Harvard University Press 1985 editor The Faber Book of Contemporary American Poetry 1986 Wallace Stevens Words Chosen out of Desire Harvard University Press 1986 Voices and Visions The Poet in America 1987 The Music of What Happens Poems Poets Critics Harvard University Press 1988 Poems by W B Yeats Selected and with an introduction by Helen Vendler 1 Arion Press 1990 The Given and the Made Strategies of Poetic Redefinition Harvard University Press 1995 Herman Melville Selected Poems selected and with an introduction by Helen Vendler Arion Press 1995 John Keats 1795 1995 With a Catalogue of the Harvard Keats Collection Harvard University Press 1995 with Leslie A Morris and William H Bond The Breaking of Style Hopkins Heaney Graham Harvard University Press 1995 The Given and the Made Strategies of Poetic Redefinition 1995 Poems Poets Poetry An Introduction and Anthology 1996 Soul Says On Recent Poetry Harvard University Press 1996 essays The Art of Shakespeare s Sonnets Harvard University Press 1997 Seamus Heaney Harvard University Press 1998 Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry 2003 editor Coming of Age as a Poet Milton Keats Eliot Plath Harvard University Press 2003 Poets Thinking Pope Whitman Dickinson Yeats Harvard University Press 2004 Invisible Listeners Lyric Intimacy in Herbert Whitman and Ashbery 2005 Our Secret Discipline Yeats and Lyric Form Harvard University Press 2007 Last Looks Last Books Stevens Plath Lowell Bishop Merrill 2010 Dickinson Selected Poems and Commentaries 2010 The Ocean the Bird and the Scholar Essays on Poets and Poetry 2015 21 Notes edit Harvard Gazette Faust named University Professor Archived 2018 12 18 at the Wayback Machine Harvard Gazette December 17 2018 a b c d e f g Matthews Tracey 2005 Contemporary authors new revision series Gale ISBN 978 1 4144 0538 4 a b c Helen Vendler The National Endowment for the Humanities Archived from the original on 2022 09 23 Retrieved 2022 09 12 a b c d e f g Donadio Rachel 2006 12 10 The Closest Reader The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Archived from the original on 2022 09 12 Retrieved 2022 09 12 a b Simic Charles The Incomparable Critic The New York Review of Books ISSN 0028 7504 Archived from the original on 2022 09 12 Retrieved 2022 09 12 a b Joel A Getz Vendler Accepts English Dept Appointment Archived 2012 10 04 at the Wayback Machine Harvard Crimson December 10 1984 List of Honorary Degree Recipients 5 April 2016 Archived from the original on 2020 01 11 Retrieved 2018 12 04 Honorary Fellows Archived from the original on 2023 02 04 Retrieved 2023 08 07 Vendler Helen 2001 Wallace Stevens Hypotheses and Contradictions PDF Proceedings of the British Academy 111 225 244 Archived PDF from the original on 2022 06 18 Retrieved 2021 03 22 See Wallace Stevens Jefferson Lecturers Archived 2011 10 20 at the Wayback Machine at NEH Website retrieved January 22 2009 Joshua D Gottlieb Vendler Tapped for National Lecture Harvard Crimson March 12 2004 Helen Vendler The Ocean the Bird and the Scholar Archived 2019 04 12 at the Wayback Machine text of Jefferson Lecture at NEH website See for example her remarks about Stevens s Harmonium and its various poems such as Le Monocle de Mon Oncle and Bantam in Pine Woods Sam Teller Vendler Advocates Larger Role for Arts in Academia Archived 2006 02 16 at the Wayback Machine Harvard Crimson March 15 2005 Gruppe 4 Litteraturvitenskap in Norwegian Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Archived from the original on 27 September 2011 Retrieved 10 January 2011 Helen Hennessy Vendler American Academy of Arts amp Sciences Archived from the original on 2022 03 28 Retrieved 2022 03 28 APS Member History search amphilsoc org Archived from the original on 2024 04 24 Retrieved 2022 03 28 Current Biography Yearbook H W Wilson Company 1986 p 584 Archived from the original on 2024 04 24 Retrieved 2022 09 12 Marquard Bryan Helen Vendler a towering presence in poetry criticism dies at 90 The Boston Globe Archived from the original on April 24 2024 Retrieved April 23 2024 O Donoghue Bernard Helen Vendler Our Secret Discipline Yeats and Lyric Form Oxford Academic Retrieved 24 April 2024 Vendler Helen Author of Poems Poets Poetry Biography and List of Works Retrieved 24 April 2024 External links editInvisible Listeners Book Princeton University Press The Closest Reader New York Times Profile Helen Vendler author page and archive from The New York Review of Books Vendler audio interview on the friendship and correspondence between poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell Henri Cole Winter 1996 Helen Vendler The Art of Criticism No 3 The Paris Review Winter 1996 141 Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe New Mexico on January 22 2003 Audio file 1 hr 20 mins Discussion on W B Yeats and poetic forms The Finite Furnished with the Infinite usurped review of Dickinson in The Oxonian Review Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Helen Vendler amp oldid 1220675048, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.