Inhabit the Poem: Last Essays

In 13 essays, the great poetry critic offers her final word on the poets who have meant the most to her, from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to Wallace Stevens and Sylvia Plath

Helen Vendler was our greatest reader of poetry, a scholar who illuminiated its inner mechanisms and emotional roots for a wide audience.

Always attentive to the stylistic and imaginative features of a poem, Vendler addresses the work of a wide range of American, English, and Irish poets—both the canonical and the u...