Helen Vendler has died. I remember reading her book Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form as an undergraduate. Before I opened it, I instinctively predicted that she would over-read the poetry out of theoretical commitment; at the time I was generally suspicious of the restlessness of New Criticism not to privilege readings based on their plausible accordance with authorial intent. Reading Vendler disabused me of that bias. In
ah, such a shame - she was brilliant. her introduction to the anthology of contemporary american poetry is worth the price of entry alone.