![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Vendler maintains, in all seriousness: “No century in the evolution of poetry in English ever had 175 poets worth reading.” Whoa! I suppose Vendler would rather I declare a Top Ten, or perhaps just five, as she herself did in her recent scholarly study Last Looks, Last Books. Let’s take a closer look at the most glaring of Helen Vendler’s broad assumptions:ġ. I have no desire to engage a critic in a debate on aesthetic preferences and consequent selection-to each her own-but I cannot let her get away with building her house of cards on falsehoods and innuendo. In her review of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, which I had the pleasure of editing, Helen Vendler seems to have allowed outrage to get the better of her, leading to a number of illogical assertions and haphazard conclusions. ![]()
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