Helen Vendler's "The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar"

This is just a quick note to say that Helen Vendler’s new essay collection The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar is out. Its publication is, for me, a major literary event. I treasure Vendler’s criticism. Her previous collections – Part of Nature, Part of Us (1980), The Music of What Happens (1988), and Soul Says (1995) – are among my favorite books. Each contains a number of her great New Yorker reviews. The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar includes two New Yorker pieces, “American X-Rays” (November 4, 1996) and “Ardor and Artifice” (March 12, 2001). But there’s much in this book that’s new to me. I look forward to exploring it and blogging about it here.