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I'm a critic rather than a scholar, a reader and writer more taken by texts than by contexts.

— Helen Vendler A Life of Learning (2001)

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More quotes by Helen Vendler

Herman Melville, in his poetry, "declare[d a] belief... that all history is mere iteration ('Age after age shall be/As age after age has been')..."

The presumption of commentary, from the first classical commentaries down to our day, is that literary works are complex enough in thought and style to solicit detailed intellectual reflection.

A Life of Learning (2001)

The young respond to poetry for the same reason I did at their age: poems tell complex truths of human response, and they structure words with particular force, wit, charm, intellectual responsibility, and plangency.

A Life of Learning (2001)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Helen Vendler (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.