Helen Vendler

“One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.”

“I think that a lot of things are hard to read if you're not in the vocabulary flow of that particular discourse. I sometimes forget that even though the words I'm using are fairly ordinary w...”

“I was unnerved to learn in my twenties that the poems of Emily Dickinson that I had memorized as a girl were not the poems as she had written them.”

“I liked teaching Henry James. When you look down at a Henry James novel from a helicopter height, you find an intricate spider web that all clings together.”

“I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. He's very original, very accurate and acute.”

“I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voice. You don't read or overhear the voice in the poem - you are the voice in the poem.”

“I always write after I think for quite a long time, so the actual writing time is rather short. I think a lot of the work gets done when you have something on your mind while you're doing ma...”

“The art of utterance persuades initially by its music and its rhythm, before semiotic or personal characteristics come into play.”