HOLLANDER, John 1929-

PERSONAL: Born October 28, 1929, in New York, NY; son of Franklin (a physiologist) and Muriel (Kornfeld) Hollander; married Anne Loesser, June 15, 1953 (divorced, 1977); married Natalie Charkow, December 15, 1981; children: (first marriage) Martha, Elizabeth. Education: Columbia University, A.B., 1950, M.A., 1952; Indiana University, Ph.D., 1959.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of English, Yale University, P.O. Box 208302, New Haven, CT 06520-8302.

CAREER: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, junior fellow, Society of Fellows, 1954-57; Connecticut College, New London, lecturer in English, 1957-59; Yale University, New Haven, CT, instructor, 1959-61, assistant professor, 1961-63, associate professor, 1964-66, professor of English, 1977-86, A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor, 1987—; Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, professor of English, 1966-77. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Gauss Lecturer, 1962, 1965; visiting professor at the Linguistic Institute, Indiana University, 1964, and at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, 1965; Churchill College, Cambridge, Overseas Fellow, 1967-68. Member of the poetry board, Wesleyan University Press, 1959-62.

MEMBER: Academy of American Poets (chancellor), American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Yale Younger Poets Award, 1958, for A Crackling of Thorns; Poetry Chap-Book Award, 1962, for The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500-1700; American Academy grant, 1963; National Institute of Arts and Letters grant for creative work in literature, 1963; senior fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1973-74; Levinson Prize, Poetry magazine, 1974; Guggenheim fellowship, 1979-80; Bollingen Prize, 1983; Mina P. Shaughnessy Award, 1983; Melville Cane Award, 1990; MacArthur Foundation fellow, 1990-; Ambassador Book Award, 1994; Governor's Arts award, State of Connecticut, 1997; Robert Penn Warren-Cleanth Brooks award, 1998. D. Litt., Marietta College, 1982; D.H.L., Indiana University, 1990; D.F.A., Maine College of Art, 1993.

WRITINGS:

The Work of Poetry, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

POETRY

A Crackling of Thorns, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1958.

A Beach Vision, privately printed, 1962.

Movie Going and Other Poems, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1962.

Various Owls, Norton (New York, NY), 1963.

Visions from the Ramble, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1965.

The Quest of the Gole, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1966.

Philomel, Turret (London, England), 1968.

Types of Shape, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1969, expanded edition, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1991.

The Night Mirror, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1971.

Town and Country Matters, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1972.

Selected Poems, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1972.

The Head of the Bed, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1974.

Tales Told of the Fathers, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1975.

Reflections on Espionage, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1976.

Spectral Emanations: New and Selected Poems, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1978.

In Place, Abattoir (Omaha, NE), 1978.

Blue Wine and Other Poems, Johns Hopkins Press (Baltimore, MD), 1979.

Looking Ahead, Nadja (New York, NY), 1982.

Powers of Thirteen: Poems, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1983.

A Hollander Garland, Tamazunchale Press (Newton, IA), 1985.

In Time and Place, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1986.

Harp Lake: Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1988.

Some Fugitives Take Cover, Sea Cliff (New York, NY) and Knopf (New York, NY), 1988.

Selected Poetry, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

Tesserae and Other Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1995.

The Poetry of Everyday Life, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1998.

Figurehead & Other Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

War Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

Picture Window, Knopf (New York, NY), 2003.

EDITOR

(With Harold Bloom) The Wind and the Rain: An Anthology of Poems for Young People, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1961.

(With Harold Bloom) Selected Poems of Ben Jonson, Dell (New York, NY), 1961.

The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500-1700, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1961, reprinted with a new preface, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1993.

(With Anthony Hecht) Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls, illustrated by Milton Glaser, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1966.

Poems of Our Moment, Pegasus (Indianapolis, IN), 1968.

American Short Stories since 1945, Harper (New York, NY), 1968.

Modern Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1968.

Images of Voice, Chelsea House (Philadelphia, PA), 1969.

An Entertainment for Elizabeth, Being a Masque of the Seven Motions; or, Terpsichore Unchained (play), produced in New York, 1969.

The Immense Parade on Supererogation Day, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1972.

(With Frank Kermode) The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1973.

(With Reuben Brower and Helen Vendler) I. A. Richards: Essays in His Honor, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1973.

Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1975, 2nd edition, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1985.

(With Irving Howe) Literature as Experience, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1979.

The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1981.

Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse, Yale University Press (New York, NY), 1981.

(Author of text) Saul Steinberg, Dal Vero (portraits), Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), 1983.

Melodious Guile: Fictive Pattern in Poetic Language, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1988.

Poetics of Influence, Schwab (New Haven, CT), 1988.

(Author of introduction) Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Essential Rossetti, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, Signet (New York, NY), 1992.

American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Library of America (New York, NY), 1993.

American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Volume 1: Philip Freneau to Walt Whitman, Volume 2: Herman Melville to Trumbull Tickney; American Indian Poetry; Folk Songs and Spirituals, Library of America (New York, NY), 1994.

Animal Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.

Garden Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1996.

Committed to Memory: One Hundred Best Poems to Memorize, Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 1997.

(Advisory Editor) Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Nineteenth Century, Fitzroy Dearborn (Chicago, IL), 1998.

(Selection) Christmas Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Robert Hass, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey, and Marjorie Perloff) American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, two volumes, Library of America (New York, NY), 2000.

Sonnets: From Dante to the Present, Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Joanna Weber) Words for Images, Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT), 2001.

American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse, Library of America (New York, NY), 2003.

Poetry for Young People: American Poetry, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport, Sterling (New York, NY), 2004.

OTHER

(With Giuliano Briganti) William Bailey, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1991.

Poetry and Music, Routledge (London, England), 2003.

Also author of Kinneret, 1987. Contributor of verse and prose to New Yorker, Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Esquire, Commentary, and other popular and scholarly journals and magazines. Editorial associate for poetry, Partisan Review, 1959-64. Contributing editor, Harper's, 1970-71.

ADAPTATIONS: The poem "The Head of the Bed" was set to music by Milton Babbitt and recorded as part of "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra: The Head of the Bed," New World Records (New York, NY), 1987; "Blue Wine" was adapted into a song cycle by Hugo Weisgall and recorded as "Lyrical Interval: Song Cycle for Piano and Low Voice," Library of Congress, 1985.

SIDELIGHTS: John Hollander's poetry, his work as an editor, and his influence as a scholar and teacher make him "a formidable presence in American literary life," in the words of J. D. McClatchy, a writer for New Republic. Although McClatchy and numerous other reviewers felt that Hollander's most significant contribution is his poetry, it is perhaps the most overlooked part of his body of work, perhaps because it is demanding and difficult. Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Stephen A. Parris found Hollander's poems "filled with a variety of literary, philosophical, and religious allusions; and his poetic technique, displaying an immense knowledge of prosody, is reminiscent of the neoclassical writers of the seventeenth century. Not surprisingly, it is precisely this difficulty that has prompted both the highest praise and severest criticism of his verse."

Hollander's first poetry collection, A Crackling of Thorns, caught the attention of W. H. Auden, who selected it for publication in the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1958 and also contributed an introductory essay. Southern Review contributor James K. Robinson found that Hollander's "early poetry resembles Auden's in its wit, its learned allusiveness, its prosodic mastery. . . .Yet, though the resonance of Hollander's poetry often reminds one of Auden, his vision is his own. He has paid his debt to the sassenach and is clearly an American poet."

From A Crackling of Thorns on through his later work, Hollander's technical skill improved and his work became more challenging, noted Parris. While A Crackling of Thorns is "a series of minor technical triumphs," Visions from the Ramble is "a significant achievement . . . in its cumulativeness and broadness of scope," and The Night Mirror sees the emergence of "a more direct poetic voice." Later works such as Tales Told of the Fathers and Spectral Emanations, Parris added, are "marked by a stunning yet troublesome technical brilliance that sets [them] apart from the bulk of modern poetry and indeed from Hollander's earlier work."

Reviewing Spectral Emanations for the New Republic, Harold Bloom reflected on his changing impressions of the poet's work over the first twenty years of his career: "I read [A Crackling of Thorns] . . . soon after I first met the poet, and was rather more impressed by the man than by the book. It has taken twenty years for the emotional complexity, spiritual anguish, and intellectual and moral power of the man to become the book. The enormous mastery of verse was there from the start, and is there still. . . . But there seemed almost always to be more knowledge and insight within Hollander than the verse could accommodate." Bloom found in Spectral Emanations "another poet as vital and accomplished as [A. R.] Ammons, [James] Merrill, [W. S.] Merwin, [John] Ashbery, James Wright, an immense augmentation to what is clearly a group of major poets."

In Blue Wine and Other Poems Hollander "reveals once more the qualities for which his poems have long been admired: wit, color, nuance, and charm," World Literature Today reviewer John Boening observed. While the critic noted that the poems "are scratched in spots by the gritty terminology of contemporary criticism," particularly Hollander's overuse of the word "text," Boening nonetheless cited poems such as "Monuments" and "Three of the Fates" as reasons to "forgive, readily forgive, and be glad to have such fine, clear, thoughtful music as Hollander, at his best, can give." Poetry's William H. Pritchard found a "passionate simplicity" in "The Dying Friend" which is "something new and welcome in Hollander's work." But, he added, "there is also plenty of the old exuberance and brilliance of invention."

A number of critics identified Blue Wine as an important milestone in Hollander's life and career. Reviewing the work for the New Leader, Phoebe Pettingell remarked, "I would guess from the evidence of Blue Wine that John Hollander is now at the crossroads of his own midlife journey, picking out a new direction to follow." Pritchard noted, "That such a book can be published but a year after the retrospective Spectral Emanations . . . suggests that Hollander is writing at the top of his powers."

Hollander's In Time and Place blends some of the characteristics of verse and prose. Poet and Times Literary Supplement contributor Jay Parini believed "an elegiac tone dominates this book, which begins with a sequence of thirty-four poems in the In Memoriam stanza. These interconnecting lyrics are exquisite and moving, superior to almost anything else Hollander has ever written." Of the lyrics in this section, New York Times Book Review's Robert von Hallberg noted that "some of the best, like 'Orpheus Alone' and 'A Defense of Rhyme,' would be memorable in any book, but here they are bright moments in a sustained meditation on a single subject: the loss of a lover, apparently a wife, and the loss of years, memory, abilities—in all, a former life." Remarking on the prose poems making up the second and third portions of In Time and Place, Parini described them as "an intriguing if unrealized attempt to come to grips with what Hollander, in a footnote, calls 'life after verse.' Full of aphoristic lines . . . and bright images . . . seem oddly irrelevant after the astonishing performance that precedes them. . . . Nonetheless, In Time and Place is a landmark in contemporary poetry." McClatchy held up In Time and Place as evidence that Hollander is "part conjurer and part philosopher, one of our language's true mythographers and one of its very best poets."

"The work collected in [Tesserae and Other Poems and Selected Poetry] makes clear that John Hollander is a considerable poet," New Republic reviewer Vernon Shetley remarked, "but it may leave readers wondering still, thirty-five years after his first book, . . . exactly what kind of poet Hollander is." The critic attributed this not only to the variety of Hollander's work, but also to his "strict avoidance of anything that might seem merely an expression of personality, as if the poet had taken to heart, much more fully than its author, Eliot's dictum that poetry should embody 'emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet.'" Thomas M. Disch commented in Poetry: "Except for the fact that, on the evidence of Tesserae, Hollander is still working at full throttle, I think the poet would be better served by a Complete Poems than by a second Selected, generous as it is. But half a loaf of Hollander is still a surfeit of riches."

Hollander was also widely praised for his editing of the expansive American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, two volumes of verse including ballads, sonnets, epic poetry, and even folk songs. Many reviewers expressed their delight at finding African-American and Indian verse included in this unusually thorough representation of the early American experience. Alexander Theroux of Chicago Tribune declared the selections "generous and astute," and praised the "scrupulous textual authority." He concluded with a challenge: "[American Poetry] should be required reading for every person who purports to care about our nation's cultural history." Herbert Mitgang of New York Times wrote, "It's clear that love of country—its roots, ideals and dreams—was one of the inspirations behind the creative process." Mitgang further praised the range of poets and authors included in the anthology: "Mr. Hollander has a large vision at work in these highly original volumes of verse. Without passing critical judgment, he allows the reader to savor not only the geniuses but also the second-rank writers of the era." In Poetry, Paul Breslin described this anthology as a "comprehensive reference text that is best embraced as a book to savor for years."

Figurehead & Other Poems, published in 1999, is a collection that showcases the poet's "intelligent humor and well-channeled creativity," noted Donna Seaman in Booklist. The verses within range from "witty and imaginative" to "bittersweet," and they "span the mind like stone aqueducts or canyon-crossing railroad bridges, awesome works of knowledge and craft, art and devotion," asserted Seaman. Library Journal contributor Daniel L. Guillory also praised the poems in Figurehead as "witty and highly interactive."

In Picture Window, the poet offered "playfully intellectual poems," remarked a Publishers Weekly writer. Booklist reviewer Seaman stated that the collection features "one cleverly constructed and philosophically agile poem after another," and examines the quirks of human perception and self-absorption. In the title poem, for example, the speaker watches what he thinks is a man admiring the glorious view out a plate glass window; he eventually realizes, however, that the man is merely looking at own reflection. It is "an unabashedly academic poetry," noted Fred Muratori in Library Journal, "where classical allusions and etymological in-jokes prance among cheeky aphorisms in strict time."

Hollander offered twenty-three essays in The Work of Poetry, identified as a "scholarly and important book" and "required reading for poets and readers of poetry" by John Kennedy in the Antioch Review. With the goal of furthering the understanding and appreciation of poetry, Hollander studies and dissects all types of poetry and some things that call themselves poetry. "The pretenders—work from certain literature programs and writing workshops and trendy writing from would-be poets lacking original thought, insight, and technical skill—do not fare well. Neither do some writers of free verse," commented Robert Kelly in Library Journal. On the other hand, the author's discussion of the poets he considers worthwhile is "not only enlightening, compelling, and demanding but also spiritual and caring."

"The demands of Hollander's poetry are great, greater perhaps than some readers are willing to accept," advised Parris. "Hollander brings to a poem everything he possesses—his sense of form, his wit, his probing intellect—and he demands no less from those who choose to read his works. One should not expect an easy time with John Hollander; one will not, however, if he makes the effort, come away empty-handed."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 5, 1976; Volume 8, 1978.

Contemporary Poets, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 5: American Poets since World War II, First Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1980.

PERIODICALS

America, June 17, 1989, p. 592; November 13, 1993, p. 18.

American Scholar, spring, 1994, p. 302.

American Spectator, September, 1994, p. 64.

Antioch Review, summer, 1998, John Kennedy, review of The Work of Poetry, p. 378.

Booklist, August, 1998, Ray Olson, review of The Best

American Poetry, 1998, p. 1953; March 1, 1999, Donna Seaman, review of Figurehead & Other Poems, p. 1145; March 15, 1999, Ray Olson, review of American Poetry: The Ninteenth Century, p. 1275; May 15, 2003, Donna Seaman, review of Picture Window, p. 1633.

Boston Globe, January 16, 1989, p. 17; May 16, 1993, p. B40.

Christian Science Monitor, August 18, 1976, p. 27; June 2, 1989, p. 13.

Commentary, September, 1975, p. 94; March, 1994, p. 54.

Commonweal, April 24, 1998, Daria Donnelly, review of The Work of Poetry, p. 25.

Contemporary Review, November, 1999, review of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, p. 277.

Explicator, summer, 2000, Philip Harlan Christensen, review of A Time of Year, p. 220.

Georgia Review, summer, 1977, p. 533; spring, 1994, pp. 162-172.

Harper's, November, 1975.

Journal of Modern Literature, spring, 1999, Irving Malin, review of The Book of Poetry, p. 476.

Library Journal, June 15, 1978; September 15, 1995, David Kirby, review of The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art, p. 66; December, 1997, Robert Kelly, review of The Work of Poetry, p. 106; August, 1998, Fred Muratori, review of The Best American Poetry: 1998, p. 94; February 15, 1999, Daniel L. Guillory, review of Figurehead & Other Poems, p. 156; April 1, 2000, Daniel L. Guillory, review of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, p. 105; May 15, 2003, Fred Muratori, review of Picture Window, p. 93.

London Review of Books, November 9, 1989, p. 24.

Nation, December 6, 1971, p. 86; November 11, 1978, p. 517; December 26, 1981, p. 714; October 3, 1994, p. 350.

New Leader, November 5, 1979, pp. 21-22; April 5, 1999, Phoebe Pettingell, review of The Work of Poetry, p. 15.

New Republic, April 6, 1974, p. 33; November 29, 1975, p. 25; November 20, 1976, p. 23; September 9, p. 42; February 9, 1987, p. 44; February 4, 1991, p. 34; September 6, 1993, pp. 36-40; November 22, 1993, p. 27.

Newsweek, January 23, 1984, p. 65.

New Yorker, December 6, 1993, p. 147.

New York Review of Books, October 2, 1975, p. 30; June 1, 1978, p. 27; December 16, 1993, p. 20; May 9, 1996, Helen Vendler, review of The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art, p. 39; September 21, 2000, Brad Leithauser, review of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, p. 70.

New York Times, August 13, 1965, p. 27; September 26, 1969, p. 5; November 2, 1993, p. C20.

New York Times Book Review, November 21, 1965, p. 74; November 20, 1966, p. 58; October 17, 1971, p. 4; February 13, 1972, p. 3; November 5, 1972, p. 47; June 16, 1974, p. 6; April 6, 1975, p. 5; August 3, 1975, p. 17; May 28, 1978; February 15, 1987, p. 42; October 22, 1989, p. 16; July 18, 1993, p. 81; April 2, 2000, William H. Pritchard, review of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, p. 10.

North American Review, May-August, 2001, Vince Gotera, review of Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse, p. 74.

Poetry, August, 1972, p. 296; January, 1975, p. 229; April, 1977, p. 41; August, 1980, pp. 299-302; December, 1984, p. 171; February, 1988, p. 433; February, 1994, pp. 285-95; March, 1995, p. 340; August, 1999, Christian Wiman, review of The Work of Poetry, P. 286.

Publishers Weekly, September 15, 1997, review of The Work of Poetry, p. 60; January 25, 1999, review of Figurehead & Other Poems, p. 90; May 19, 2003, review of Picture Window, p. 67.

Southern Review, April, 1978, pp. 348-358.

Southwest Review, spring-summer, 2001, William Flesch, "Playing Patience: John Hollander's Reflections on Espionage," p. 228; spring-summer, 2001, David Bromwich, "Self-Deception and Self-Knowledge in John Hollander's Poetry," p. 246.

Times Literary Supplement, May 11, 1973, p. 516; August 30, 1974, p. 932; January 18, 1980, p. 65; May 7, 1982, p. 499; March 28, 1986, p. 343; July 17, 1987, p. 767; August 11, 1989, p. 880; March 4, 1994, p. 4.

Tribune (Chicago, IL), March 20, 1994, p. 6.

Washington Post Book World, December 17, 1978; February 1, 1987, p. 6; December 25, 1988, p. 6; December 26, 1993, p. 1.
World Literature Today, spring, 1980, p. 285; winter, 1990, p. 118.

Yale Review, autumn, 1972, p. 81; autumn, 1987, p. 115.*