John Hollander

An anthology of fantastical and ghostly poems spans some three thousand years of literary explorations of the supernatural in works by Homer, Ovid, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Virgil, Charles Baudelaire, Randall Jarrell, and James Merrill, among others.

Poems Bewitched and Haunted

In Spring in the Garden, Edna St. Vincent Millay writes: "Ah, cannot the curled shoots of the larkspur that you loved so, / Cannot the spiny poppy that no winter kills / Instruct you how to return through the thawing ground and thin snow / Into this April sun that is driving the mist between the hills?"

Garden Poems

A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Quantum Book)

The Figure of Echo

In his classic text, 'Rhyme’s reason', the distinguished poet and critic John Hollander surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example. In this substantially expanded and revised edition, Hollander adds a section of examples taken from centuries of poetry that exhibit the patterns he has described.

A Guide to English Verse

Rhyme's Reason

A Crackling of Thorns

From the East and West, from ancient times to modern, from Mei Yu Ch'en on swarming mosquitoes to William Cullen Bryant's solitary waterfowl and Rainer Maria Rilke's enchanted gazelle, from Auden on cats and dogs to James Merrill's vision of the octopus, here are 136 poems that provide access to literature's lyric zoo.

Animal Poems

Tesserae and Other Poems

This book-length poem by one of the major poets of our era is structured as a series of messages transmitted by a master spy to the director of spy operations and to a number of his fellow spies. The spy speaks of his own alienation and sense of purposelessness as a secret agent-a metaphor for a human existence committed to ordering, deciphering, and making sense of a world of random signs. First published in 1974, the book is now reprinted with a substantial introduction by the author that elaborates on the genesis of the poem, the literary figures who inspired some of the characters, the poem's reception, and other matters. Reviews of the earlier edition: "These poems can be read and admired for their fluidity, their wonderful diversity of significance. . . . Many delights."-Richard Poirier, Los Angeles Times "Hollander's arch and subtle long poem allegorizes the mirror closeness between raveller and unraveller."-George Steiner, New Yorker "Hollander explores with wit and virtuosity the pleasures of poetry (encipherment) and the trials of the workaday world (one's 'cover.') . . . A rich, intelligent poem . . . a special pleasure for those with an ear for allusions, parodies, and puns."-Library Journal

The Question of Cupcake

Reflections on Espionage

Provides an overview of Hollander's career with selections from eleven previous volumes of poetry published between 1958 and 1988

Selected Poetry

Harold Bloom

Frank Kermode

Lionel Trilling

Romantic poetry and prose

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature

A glorious new collection from one of our most distinguished poets. Here are poems that explore the ways in which ordinary objects open doors to the more hidden, subconscious truths of our inner selves: a bird of “countless colors” calls to mind “the echo . . . / of an inner event / From my forgotten past”; a subway bee sting conjures up quick unlikely visits by the muses—a momentary awareness that is “as much of a / Gift from those nine sisters as / Is ever given.” Other poems lay bare the imperfect nature of our memories: reality altered by our inevitably less accurate but perhaps “truer” recall of past events (“memory— / As full of random holes as any / Uncleaned window is of spots / Of blur and dimming—begins at once / To interfere”). Still others examine the dramatic changes in perspective we undergo over the course of a lifetime as, in the poem “When We Went Up,” John Hollander describes the varied responses he has to climbing the same mountain at different points in his life. In all of the poems Hollander illuminates the fluid nature of physical and emotional experience, the connections between the simple things we encounter every day and the ways in which the meaning we attribute to them shapes our lives. Like the harmonious coming together of bandstand instruments on a summer afternoon, he writes, most of what we come to know in the world is “A dying moment / Of lastingness thenceforth / Ever not to be.” Throughout this thought-provoking collection, Hollander reveals the ways in which we are constantly creating unique worlds of our own, “a draft of light” of our own making, and how these worlds, in turn, continually shape our most basic identities and truest selves.

Poems

A Draft of Light

In a major review in The New Republic of John Hollander's two earlier books, Tesserae and Selected Poetry (both 1993), Vernon Shetley said, "John Hollander's poetry has shown a visionary power just often enough to secure him a place as one of the major figures of our moment." Figurehead, a lively, varied, and technically dazzling book, confirms the statement made by Henry Taylor in the Washington Times: "John Hollander revels in technical challenges of unusual severity and complexity, yet most of his poems also have the emotional heft of something worth pausing over and remembering." One of the most gifted of W. H. Auden's choices for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Hollander has pursued the wide range and metrical brilliance of Auden's own poetry, so that this new book exhibits both a large compass of subject matter (from philosophical matters to personal narrative) and, as usual, some astonishing meditations on paintings--here, by Charles Sheeler, Rene Magritte, and Edward Hopper. By turns witty, touching, profound, mocking, ingenious, and always clever, Hollander's poems are a joy for the reader. He is a modern master.

And Other Poems

Figurehead

Yale Series of Younger Poets, V54

Contemporary poems of the English language.

Poems of Our Moment

The Italian Tradition in American Art

Landscape Painting, 1960-1990

Demonstrating a poet's imaginative ear and a critic's range of concern, John Hollander here writes about the "melodious guile" of poetry, explaining how poems frame parables about themselves. Hollander considers works by Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, chiefly, plus a range of other poets including Chaucer, Keats, Rossetti, Tennyson, Frost, Stevens, and Auden. He also presents certain poems of his own, showing how they anticipate and exemplify the observations contained in this volume.

Fictive Pattern in Poetic Language

Melodious Guile

Two Senses of Poetic Form

Vision and Resonance

Poet John Hollander surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse in this classic text, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example. In new essays for this fourth edition, J. D. McClatchy and Richard Wilbur each offer a personal take on why the book has played such an important role in the education of young poets and student scholars. “How lucky the young poet who discovers this wisest and most lighthearted of manuals.”—James Merrill “Marvelously comprehensive, clarifying and useful, and a delight to read.”—John Reardon, Los Angeles Times Book Review “A virtuoso performance and a mandatory text for poetry readers and practioners alike.”—ALA Booklist

A Guide to English Verse, Fourth Edition

An anthology of poems, most of them by English poets of earlier centuries, which reflect the symbolic overtones and moods of the seasons.

John Hollander

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