March 25, 2005

Two Views of Poetry Criticism

To the Editor:

For the record, I spent at least 20 minutes on the phone with Scott McLemee, your reporter, trying to explain to him the difference between my poetics and Helen Vendler's, and also the very real affinities between us, and I referred him to specific articles where I had discussed these things ("The Grand Dame of Poetry Criticism," The Chronicle, January 28). What came out? The journalistic sound bite about Vendler's having a "moral view of literature."

As they

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