Discriminating poet

Harvard professor Helen Vendler's comment yesterday in the New York Times Review of Books that she seldom reviews poets under 50 is getting a rise out of poets on both sides of 50.

The next to last paragraph in a long profile:
Today Vendler seldom reviews poets under 50, since their “frames of reference,” she says, are alien to her. “They’re writing about the television cartoons they saw when they were growing up. And that’s fine. It’s as good a resource of imagery as orchards. Only I’ve seen orchards and I didn’t watch these cartoons,” she said. “So I don’t feel I’m the best reader for most of the young ones.”

You can hear the frustration in 51-year-old Doug Holder's post on his Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene blog:
"As a major reviewer I think she should be better informed about poets under 50. This seems very dismissive to me. I mean she writes about poets in the 1700's, etc. ... She must of studied the milieu back then. Then why not pay some attention to the younger poets. Ah! The academy.''

Jennifer Bartlett writes on her blog that the only poet she knows of who writes about TV is Robert Pinsky, who is over 50 and moves in Vendler's circle. Vendler, by the way, is 73.