From
Poetry Scholar Vendler Picked for Jefferson Lecture:
- Helen Hennessy Vendler, a leading interpreter of English language poets, will deliver this year's Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced yesterday.
- Her lecture, Vendler said yesterday, will most likely focus on Wallace Stevens, the lawyer and insurance executive who wrote his poems in his spare time.
"He ranks with Frost and Eliot among the moderns," said Vendler, who has written two books on Stevens. "Eliot was the first to solidly establish free verse. Frost was the first to turn blank verse to something Americans could say. Stevens profited from not necessarily knowing that but being able to do the same things in blank and free verse."
- The lecture is the highest platform provided by the nation for distinguished work in the humanities. Vendler, who will receive a $10,000 honorarium, will speak May 6.
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