The Fifty-sixth A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts 2007
Last Looks, Last Books: The Binocular Poetry of Death
Helen Vendler
April
–May, 2007
East Building Auditorium
Lectures are held in the East Building Auditorium (eba) at 2:00 p.m. Lectures are free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration is not required.
April 15
Introduction
Facing the Worst: Wallace Stevens, "The Rock"
April 29
The Contest of Melodrama and Restraint: Sylvia Plath, "Ariel"
May 6
Death by Subtraction: Robert Lowell, "Day by Day"
May 13
Caught and Freed: Elizabeth Bishop, "Geography III"
May 20
Self-Portraits While Dying: James Merrill, "A Scattering of Salts"
Listen to Helen Vendler on last poems, "The Hermitage at the Center" by Wallace Stevens and "Christmas Tree" by James Merrill, with Curtis Fox from the poetryfoundation.org.
(22 mins. 24 secs.) (Download QuickTime)
Helen Vendler is one of the most influential critics of contemporary poetry in the United States. A distinguished scholar, she has published acclaimed books on the odes of Keats and on the sonnets of Shakespeare, as well as reviews for The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books and other journals.
Among her books on aspects of contemporary poetry are Part of Nature, Part of Us (1980), Soul Says (1995), The Given and the Made (1996) and Coming of Age as a Poet (2003). Vendler has also edited a number of anthologies, notably The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1985).
Vendler has taught at Harvard since 1985. She previously taught at Cornell University, Swarthmore College, Haverford College, Smith College, and Boston University. She has held many fellowships, including three from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Guggenheim and a Fulbright. She has frequently been a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry; she also served on the Pulitzer Board. She holds 23 honorary degrees from universities and colleges in the United States and abroad.
A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts were established by the National Gallery of Art's Board of Trustees in 1949 "to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts."