Jane Mayer
American writer and investigative journalist
Mark Van Doren
American poet and literary critic (1894-1972)
Mark Van Dorenwas an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
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About the Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Dorenwas an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He was literary editor of The Nation, in New York Cityand Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949); collections of poems including Jonathan Gentry (1931); stories; and the verse play The Last Days of Lincoln (1959). A notable student, later a colleague, was Lionel Trilling. David Lehman writes that “Though the differences between them were many – Trilling struck some as patrician in demeanor where Van Doren seemed ever the populist – the two great professors inspired a rare filial devotion in generations of Columbia students. It was inevitably either Mark Van Doren or Lionel Trilling who was the favorite professor of students with a literary vocation, and in time Columbia would name its highest teaching accolade after Van Doren and its major award for scholarship after Trilling.” He won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922-1938.
7 Quotes by Mark Van Doren
- 1.
The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
Mark Van DorenAmerican poet and literary critic (1894-1972)
- 2.
Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.
Mark Van DorenAmerican poet and literary critic (1894-1972)
- 3.
Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.
Mark Van DorenAmerican poet and literary critic (1894-1972)
- 4.
Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth.
Mark Van DorenAmerican poet and literary critic (1894-1972)
- 5.
When it aims to express a love of the world it refuses to conceal the many reasons why the world is hard to love, though we must love it because we have no other, and to fail to love it is not to exist at all.
Mark Van DorenAmerican poet and literary critic (1894-1972)
- 6.
The job of the poet is to render the world – to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.
Mark Van DorenAmerican poet and literary critic (1894-1972)
- 7.
To fail to love is not to exist at all.
Mark Van DorenAmerican poet and literary critic (1894-1972)