Description
Book SynopsisWhat impels poets to leap across time and space to speak to invisible listeners, seeking an ideal intimacy? This book argues that such poets must invent the language that will enact, on the page, an intimacy they lack in life.
Trade Review"Helen Vendler['s] ... Invisible Listeners, a compact study of "lyric intimacy" in three poets, demonstrates, if you have forgotten, some of the best reasons to read literary criticism."--Langdon Hammer, The New York Times Book Review "[A] compact and lively little book... Vendler's brisk and light touch, her ability to pick at a line for every bit of meaning, makes this an enjoyable and moving book."--Angela Leighton, Times Literary Supplement "As poetry is not read but re-read, so Vendler's handsome analysis should be, the art of engaged reading."--Leeta Taylor, Foreword Magazine
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi Introduction Invisible Listeners 1 CHAPTER ONE: George Herbert and God 9 CHAPTER TWO: Walt Whitman and the Reader-in-Futurity 31 CHAPTER THREE: John Ashbery and the Artist of the Past 57 Conclusion Domesticating the Unseen 79 Notes 81 Index 91
