Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: On Criticism 1. The Function of Criticism 2. Looking for Poetry in America 3. Critical Models: On Geoffrey Hartman 4. Defensive Harmonies: On Harold Bloom 5. The Medley Is the Message: On Roland Barthes 6. The Hunting of Wallace Stevens: Critical Approaches Part II: On Poetry 7. Lionel Trilling and Wordsworth's Immortality Ode 8. Keats and the Use of Poetry 9. Reading Walt Whitman Part III: On Poets 10. Seamus Heaney 11. Stephen Spender: Journals and Poems 12. Donald Davie: Self-Portraits in Verse 13. Ted Hughes 14. Czeslaw Milosz 15. John Ashbery, Louise Gluck 16. Allen Ginsberg 17. Sylvia Plath 18. Elizabeth Bishop 19. Anne Sexton 20. A. R. Ammons: Dwelling in the Flow of Shapes Part IV: Recent Writing 21. James Merrill 22. Adrienne Rich, Jared Carter, Philip Levine 23. Charles Wright 24. Amy Clampitt 25. Dave Smith 26. Frank Bidart 27. Michael Blumenthal 28. Louise Gluck, Stephen Dunn, Brad Leithauser,

About the Author

Helen Vendler (1933–2024) was a leading poetry critic and the author of nineteen books on poets from William Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney. A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, she contributed regularly to the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, and the New Republic. She was the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University.

Reviews

Vendler’s is an ample book…and will give us enough to go on digesting and arguing about, approving and resisting, for a long time yet.
*Times Literary Supplement*

The Music of What Happens, with its deft, precise treatment of the configurative strategies of Ashbery, Heaney, Ginsberg, Sexton, and others reminds us why, ultimately, we might put the newspaper down and read a poem instead.
*Bloomsbury Review*

Any criticism that develops so complex a sense of what really good poetry does, and develops it so lovingly, is to be cherished.
*Boston Globe*

Vendler is essential, whether one delights or despairs in her views. More, The Music of What Happens is the essential Vendler.
*Chicago Tribune*

Polite, decisive, and insightful, Vendler is our most distinguished critic of modern poetry. In this collection she deals with writers as diverse as Donald Davie and A. R. Ammons… It is her own likes and dislikes, tirelessly examined and cross-examined, that give her frequent bursts of critical eloquence the foundation of truth.
*Choice*

Vendler's is an ample book...and will give us enough to go on digesting and arguing about, approving and resisting, for a long time yet. -- Charles Tomlinson * Times Literary Supplement *
The Music of What Happens, with its deft, precise treatment of the configurative strategies of Ashbery, Heaney, Ginsberg, Sexton, and others reminds us why, ultimately, we might put the newspaper down and read a poem instead. -- Robert Lindsey * Bloomsbury Review *
Any criticism that develops so complex a sense of what really good poetry does, and develops it so lovingly, is to be cherished. -- Alan Williamson * Boston Globe *
Vendler is essential, whether one delights or despairs in her views. More, The Music of What Happens is the essential Vendler. -- G. E. Murray * Chicago Tribune *
Polite, decisive, and insightful, Vendler is our most distinguished critic of modern poetry. In this collection she deals with writers as diverse as Donald Davie and A. R. Ammons... It is her own likes and dislikes, tirelessly examined and cross-examined, that give her frequent bursts of critical eloquence the foundation of truth. * Choice *