A Times Higher Education Book of the Week One of our foremost commentators on poetry examines the work of a broad range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English, Irish, and American poets. The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar gathers two decades' worth of Helen Vendler's essays, book reviews, and occasional prose-including the 2004 Jefferson Lecture-in a single volume. "It's one of [Vendler's] finest books, an impressive summation of a long, distinguished career in which she revisits many of the poets she has venerated over a lifetime and written about previously. Reading it, one can feel her happiness in doing what she loves best. There is scarcely a page in the book where there isn't a fresh insight about a poet or poetry." -Charles Simic, New York Review of Books "Vendler has done perhaps more than any other living critic to shape-I might almost say 'create'-our understanding of poetry in English." -Joel Brouwer, New York Times Book Review "Poems are artifacts and [Vendler] shows us, often thrillingly, how those poems she considers the best specimens are made A reader feels that she has thoroughly absorbed her subjects and conveys her understanding with candor, clarity, wit." -John Greening, Times Literary Supplement