Helen Vendler, 1933 - 2024

April 25, 2024 9:44 PM

Helen Vendler, perhaps the preeminent contemporary American poetry critic, has passed away at 90.

Here are obits from the Boston Globe and the NYT; a brief mention in the LRB, and a remembrance by A. O. Scott. Helen Vendler on MetaFilter, previously.

posted by whir (13 comments total)

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posted by Kattullus at 1:11 AM on April 26 [1 favorite]

She was a fantastic professor and really helped me understand and enjoy poetry.
posted by snofoam at 1:58 AM on April 26 [2 favorites]

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posted by cupcakeninja at 2:53 AM on April 26

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posted by trip and a half at 4:10 AM on April 26

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posted by adekllny at 5:54 AM on April 26

I knew nothing about her personal life until I saw the obituaries.

• Graduated summa cum laude... in chemistry.
• Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship... to study mathematics. But she changed her mind on the way to Belgium and switched to literature when she got there.
• Took English courses at Boston University to qualify for the doctoral program at Harvard, where she received a warm welcome the chairman of the English department wrote “You know we don’t want you here, Miss Hennessy: we don’t want any women here.”
• Married a former Jesuit priest. But he was a philosopher named Zeno, so maybe she was just never getting anywhere with him. The marriage lasted only four years.
• Did all of that subsequent teaching and writing in the 60s and 70s as a single mom (waited for her son to go to sleep and then started working again).

posted by pracowity at 6:06 AM on April 26 [10 favorites]

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posted by clavdivs at 6:58 AM on April 26

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posted by exlotuseater at 8:31 AM on April 26

She was brilliant and also funny. It was in the middle of a Shakespeare class, discussing Othello, that she sniffled a bit and then suddenly pulled out a handkerchief with a pattern of strawberries on it. The class started laughing but she just kept going.
A brilliant, critical mind too who appreciated that Wallace Stevens was the greatest English language poet of the 20th century.
She lived a long life but the world has still been robbed of a great one.
posted by vacapinta at 10:59 AM on April 26 [5 favorites]

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posted by doctornemo at 11:07 AM on April 26

"Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre"

-Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, I.
posted by clavdivs at 5:13 PM on April 26 [5 favorites]

I had no first hand experience, but I know Helen Vendler's name and remember discussions about her classes and her formidable influence simply via sharing an apartment with a couple of Harvard grad students back in 90's. The reverence and love she inspired is still palpable.
posted by amusebuche at 6:01 PM on April 26 [1 favorite]

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Very sad news (though 90 is a venerable age). She was a brilliant critic.
posted by jokeefe at 12:38 AM on April 29 [1 favorite]