March 11, 2005

The True Power of a Literary Critic

To the Editor:

In her 2004 Jefferson Lecture, Helen Vendler declared that "the arts are true to the way we are and were, to the way we actually live and have lived -- as singular persons swept by drives and affections, not as collective entities or sociological paradigms" ("The Grand Dame of Poetry Criticism," The Chronicle, January 28). Clearly her approach to poetry is rooted in this resolve, and she enters a poem with an open mind, free of the excess baggage of theory and