29 Quotes by Helen Vendler

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

To create the new we must first de-create the old; and the reality of decreation (as Stevens called it, borrowing the word from Simone Weil) is as strong as the reality of creation.

Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.

I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. Hes very original, very accurate and acute.

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 words, the concepts around which they cluster, which are the long concepts of literary tradition, may not be familiar to an audience.

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.

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

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 would like to spend more time with Spanish poetry. I know French better than Spanish, but Spanish was my first language, and my father spoke it to us.