For the mind and the imagination, bookstores aren't enough, college courses aren't enough, the Internet isn't enough. Those resources are all governed by the tastes and needs of the moment. Only libraries take the long view, quietly shelving the unused with the used, knowing that one of these days the two categories will be reversed by a student's discovery of those hitherto undisturbed volumes whose contents will unsettle the learned world.
The non-artists among us are always terribly busy, but finally disappear without a trace. - Helen Vendler
The non-artists among us are always terribly busy, but finally disappear without a trace.
- Helen Vendler
You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem, you are the voice in the poem. - Helen Vendler
You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem, you are the voice in the poem.
All good poets of the past, almost without exception, were at least bilingual if not trilingual. - Helen Vendler
All good poets of the past, almost without exception, were at least bilingual if not trilingual.
Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature. - Helen Vendler
Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.
When I first heard Wallace Stevens voice, it was by chance: a friend wanted to listen to the recording he had made for the Harvard Vocarium Series. - Helen Vendler
When I first heard Wallace Stevens voice, it was by chance: a friend wanted to listen to the recording he had made for the Harvard Vocarium Series.
Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it. - Helen Vendler
Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.
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 to… - Helen Vendler
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 to…
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. - Helen Vendler
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 like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. Hes very original, very accurate and acute. - Helen Vendler
I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. Hes very original, very accurate and acute.
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