Soul Says

On Recent Poetry

Helen Vendler

    Introduction

    1. The Reversed Pietà: Mien Ginsberg's "Kaddish"

    2. Flower Power: Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris

    3. Veracity Unshaken: A. R. Ammons' Sumerian Vistas

    4. Recomposed and Clarified: James Merrill's The Inner Room

    5. Southern Weather: Dave Smith

    6. Huge Pits of Darkness, High Peaks of Lights: Robinson Jeffers

    7. New York Pastoral: James Schuyler

    8. Imagination Pressing Back: Frank Bidart, Albert Goldbarth, and Amy Clampitt

    9. Election and Reprobation: Donald Davie's Collected Poems

    10. A World of Foreboding: Charles Simic

    11. American Zen: Gary Snyder's No Nature

    12. A Steely Glitter Chasing Shadows: John Ashbery's Flow Chart

    13. A Dissonant Triad: Henri Cole, Rita Dove, and August Kleinzahler

    14. The Black Dove: Rita Dove, Poet Laureate

    15. Drawn to Figments and Occasion: Lucie Brock-Broido's A Hunger

    16. Second Thoughts: Seamus Heaney's The How Lantern

    17. A Wounded Man Falling Towards Me: Seamus Heaney's The Government of the Tongue

    18. Earth and Ethereality: Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems, 1966-1987

    19. Mapping the Air: Adrienne Rich and Jorie Graham

    20. Married to Hurry and Grim Song: Jorie Graham's The End of Beauty

    21. Fin-de-Siècle Poetry: Jorie Graham

    Credits

    Index

  • Cover: Soul Says
  • A photo of the author

Photo of Helen Vendler: Mary Lee

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