Soul Says: On Recent Poetry

“Vendler again demonstrates—if proof were needed—why she is the finest poetry reviewer in the country.”
—Boston Globe

The renowned critic of Stevens, Keats, and Herbert turns an incisive gaze to her contemporaries, from Louise Glück to Rita Dove.

Lyric poetry, says the incomparable Helen Vendler, is defined by immediacy. If the novel aspires to represent life in all its complexity, with characters woven into their manifold historical and sociological contexts, lyric captures the human being in...