May 2011 - Helen Vendler, A. Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University. This six-part lecture series considers the final works of five modern American poets, as they "take the last look"�reconciling the interface of life and death, without the promise of an afterlife.In this audio podcast of the second lecture, originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on April 22, 2007, the esteemed poetry critic and professor Helen Vendler discusses Wallace Stevens' The Rock, a collection of poems reflecting on "the last face of being, when life faces death."