Soul Says: On Recent Poetry

Abstract

In these essays on American, British and Irish poetry, Helen Vendler shows us contemporary life and culture captured in lyric form by some of our most celebrated poets. Vendler explains power of poetry; it is, she says, the voice of the soul, rather than the socially marked self, speaking directly to us through the stylization of verse. Soul Says, the title of a poem by Jorie Graham, is thus the name of this collection. In essays on Seamus Heaney, Donald Davie, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Rita Dove, Jorie Graham and others, Vendler makes difficult poetry accessible and explores contemporary lyric verse.

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