The Best Poetry Critic in America

04/21/23 • 24 min

For this special Poetry Month bonus episode of Colloquy, a conversation with Harvard Professor Helen Vendler, PhD ’60—once called “the best poetry critic in America” by The New Republic’s Alfred Kazin—about the art of verse and why both the poetic form and its great works have enduring value in the era of the social media-induced seven-second attention span.

Previous Episode

The Secret Teachings of Jesus

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

Is this saying from a Zen Buddhist Text? The Hindu Bhagavad Gita? Actually, these are the words of Jesus . . . according to the 2,000-year-old Gospel of Thomas. The Princeton University scholar Elaine Pagels, PhD '70, says that this text—discovered in Egypt in 1945 along with the Gospel of Philip—contains Christ’s “secret teachings,” in contrast to those meant for public worship and included in the four canonical gospels of the New Testament.

So why were the gospels of Thomas and Philip banned by the church as illegitimate and heretical over 1600 years ago? And how do they change the way we understand the Christian tradition today?

This month on Colloquy: The “Gnostic Gospels” and their place in the history of early Christianity with Elaine Pagels.

Next Episode

Vets, Trauma, and the Search for Meaning

Ben Bellet, is a Harvard Griffin GSAS PhD student in clinical psychology who studies PTSD. A graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, Bellet served as an officer in the army for five years. During his deployments in Afghanistan and Kuwait, he found himself less and less interested in logistics and operations and more interested in the Dostoevskian question of human suffering, particularly among the soldiers he led.

Today, at Harvard, Bellet researches the ways that those living with PTSD can compulsively seek reminders of trauma. One of the gold standard treatments, exposure therapy, encourages survivors to approach reminders of the traumatic event. But Bellet's studies indicate that some survivors might expose themselves to these reminders in ways that confirm toxic beliefs about themselves. His data suggests that clinicians need to be flexible in their approach to treating the condition, always keeping in mind their patients need to find meaning in their distress.