At an early point in this collection, Helen Vendler tells us that her own attempts at writing poetry fell away while she was at graduate school. She felt guilty about this until she attended a literary party where an eminent American poet (she is coy about whom) asked if she wrote poetry; when she replied, no, but she felt bad about it, she was “laughed to scorn, telling me that if I’d been meant to be a poet and tried to stop, I’d immediately have found myself prey to migraines, indigestion, insomnia, or something worse, that the Muse will not be baulked of her own”. This telling anecdote neatly encapsulates the essential, and well-known, problem of the critic who does not practise the art he or she has become adept at, even renowned for, analysing. The Muse is fa