Quote

All good poets of the past, almost without exception, were at least bilingual if not trilingual.

Helen Vendler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Helen Vendler
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: April 30
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Helen Hennessy Vendler
Poets
Exception
Poet
Least
Almost
Past
Without
Good
Bilingual

More quotes by Helen Vendler

Image
Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.
Helen Vendler
Image
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
Image
I do not give the honorific name of 'poetry' to the primitive and the unaccomplished.
Helen Vendler
Image
One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.
Helen Vendler
Image
The art of utterance persuades initially by its music and its rhythm, before semiotic or personal characteristics come into play.
Helen Vendler
Image
If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.
Helen Vendler
Image
Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity.
Helen Vendler
Image
A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.
Helen Vendler
Image
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.
Helen Vendler
Image
Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.
Helen Vendler
Image
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