The Music of What Happens

Poems, Poets, Critics

Helen Vendler

    Acknowledgments

    Introduction

    Part I: On Criticism

    1. The Function of Criticism

    2. Looking for Poetry in America

    3. Critical Models: On Geoffrey Hartman

    4. Defensive Harmonies: On Harold Bloom

    5. The Medley Is the Message: On Roland Barthes

    6. The Hunting of Wallace Stevens: Critical Approaches

    Part II: On Poetry

    7. Lionel Trilling and Wordsworth's Immortality Ode

    8. Keats and the Use of Poetry

    9. Reading Walt Whitman

    Part III: On Poets

    10. Seamus Heaney

    11. Stephen Spender: Journals and Poems

    12. Donald Davie: Self-Portraits in Verse

    13. Ted Hughes

    14. Czeslaw Milosz

    15. John Ashbery, Louise Glück

    16. Allen Ginsberg

    17. Sylvia Plath

    18. Elizabeth Bishop

    19. Anne Sexton

    20. A. R. Ammons: Dwelling in the Flow of Shapes

    Part IV: Recent Writing

    21. James Merrill

    22. Adrienne Rich, Jared Carter, Philip Levine

    23. Charles Wright

    24. Amy Clampitt

    25. Dave Smith

    26. Frank Bidart

    27. Michael Blumenthal

    28. Louise Glück, Stephen Dunn, Brad Leithauser,

  • Cover: The Music of What Happens
  • A photo of the author

Photo of Helen Vendler: Mary Lee

Helen Vendler is A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University.