Helen Vendler

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Helen Vendler (born Helen Hennessy; April 30, 1933 – April 23, 2024) was an American professor, writer, and poetry critic. She taught at Harvard and several other universities and was known for close reading, a method she described as “reading from the point of view of a writer.”

Early life and education
Vendler was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents encouraged her to read poetry as a child. She studied at Emmanuel College (AB) and later earned a PhD in English and American literature from Harvard University. She faced gender barriers at Harvard early on but went on to have a long and influential academic career.

Career
Vendler taught at many institutions, including Cornell, Haverford, Swarthmore, Boston University, Smith College, and Harvard University (where she was a professor from 1984 until her death). Her work focused on poetry from Shakespeare and George Herbert to modern poets such as Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Seamus Heaney, and John Keats. She championed close reading of poetry and wrote numerous books on major poets. Vendler reviewed poetry for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books and served as a judge for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, influencing the reputations of many poets.

Personal life
She married Zeno Vendler in 1960; the marriage ended in 1963. They had one child.

Awards and honors
Vendler received many honors, including:
- Fulbright Scholarship (1954)
- James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association (1969)
- ACLS Fellowship (1970)
- Metcalf Cup & Prize, Boston University (1975)
- National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism (1980)
- Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism (1996)
- Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities (2004)
- Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2013)
- Gold Medal for Belles Letters and Criticism, American Academy of Arts and Letters (2023)

Legacy
Vendler is regarded as one of America's leading poetry critics. Her work helped shape the reputations of poets like Seamus Heaney, and she contributed to the broader understanding and appreciation of poetry through her teaching, writing, and judging of major literary awards.

Death
Helen Vendler died on April 23, 2024, at her home in Laguna Niguel, California, at the age of 90.