Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent debut from one of America's foremost poets.
John Hollander, A Crackling of Thorns (Yale, 1958)

The Yale Series of Younger Poets is, by and large, a very good thing. Seems like every book of theirs I've come across has been chock full of poety goodness, and this, the first book from John Hollander, is no exception. Introduced by W. H. Auden (who criticizes Hollander for some of his word choices, but otherwise seems to think he's the bees' knees), A Crackling of Thorns was one of the last salvos in a battle poetry has been losing over the past century-the formal verse. And Hollander excels at formal verse, though the times he lapses into blank verse are some of the collection's most powerful moments.

Hollander remains one of the few poets, along with such luminaries as Marilyn Hacker and Dana Gioia, who excel in the art of formal poetry. A Crackling of Thorns was Hollander at his grandiose finest, when life was still a Greek tragedy and all of us set decorators. If you enjoy Hollander's later work (or have been put off by his sporadic coarseness), this is definitely one to check out; if you're unaware of his work, or if you're a teacher looking for a good, solid collection with which to introduce more complex formal work to a class, this is a fantastic place to get to know the work of John Hollander.*** ½ ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Absolutely brilliant.
John Hollander, The Quest of the Gole (Atheneum, 1966)

I'm really quite at a loss to describe The Quest of the Gole. It purports to be the epic tale of three brothers who must raise a curse on their late father's kingdom. But it also purports to be the (fictional, one assumes after a bit of research) story of a literary scholar trying to piece the tale together from various literary fragments; think of it as an ancient House of Leaves. And if it does end up being nonfiction, then it's a decent piece of scholarship, albeit in the docudrama kind of way.

As a piece of fiction, though, it's a whole new ballgame. Mr. Hollander's Opus (forgive the pun) is a stunning creation, both mock-scholarly and readable, and including such a wide range of various epic styles of poetry that it really does read like scholarship containing fragments from at least ten or twelve different poets who were writing between the first modern poems (around the time of Beowulf and "Summer is Icumen in") and the Renaissance. Technically, it is a masterpiece of the first water, and for that reason alone, it deserves a place in the canon.

But that is not all there is to the Quest of the Gole. There's also two cracking good storylines (the story of the Quest itself, and the researcher's flights of fancy in the uncovering of bits and pieces, which sits between the lines), more readable pages than you're likely to find in any of Hollander's other books (the man is a fine poet, but ease of reading has never been high on his list of priorities), some wonderful line drawings that make one think perhaps Roald Dahl was influenced by them a few years later when looking for someone to illustrate his first few childrens' books, and an all-around sense of luxuriousness rare from a simply-packaged hardback.

A very, very fine piece of work. A shoo-in for my ten-best list this year. **** ½

A hidden classic.
Written in a mock-style of an ancient ballad, The Quest of the Gole is the story of three young princes set out to end the curse on their dismal and damp kingdom in order to ascend the throne. Each prince sets out on his own path to glory and wisdom, but in the end, they all end up questing for the same thing: A mysterious relic called "The Gole" in a mystical journey of self discovery.

The book when read, can be slightly confusing, and a trifle disjointed as the authors break off the poetic intro into a traditional novel style of writing. Calling on references of in-story legends to further the story, it hap-hazardly jumps from poetry to prose, and back again in ways that are not entirely displeasing.

It is my personal opinion that any lover of fantasy should find some sort of way to aquire a copy of this book, as it is, in fact, well worth the read. The fluidity of the author's poetry is rivaled only in imagination as the remarkably surreal illustrations by Reginald Pollack.

As this book, from my understanding has been out of print since the mid-60's, it is in rather short supply. But if at all possible, I whole-heartedly recomend The Quest of the Gole. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fantastic.
John Hollander, Tales Told of the Fathers (Atheneum, 1975)

I am an unabashed fan of the artsy, earthy formalism of John Hollander. I've read a good number of his books over the past few years, though by no means all of them. But, of those I've read, of his books for adults, I think Tales Told of the Fathers may be the best of them.

Hollander is always a fine poet. What underscores it here, makes it just a tad better than usual, is the book's readability; Hollander's love of wordplay, alliteration, and punning is the same here as in his other works, but there's an extra added dimension, an ineffable something that helps these hundred pages to simply flow better than many of his other book-length collections. I have no idea what this quality is, or why it manifests itself here more than it did in, say, Town and Country Matters. These are fun poems, dealing with matters of the mundane, though surely able to stand up to as much scrutiny to which any doctoral candidate looking for dissertation fodder would subject them. But most readers won't be concerned with that; these poems are, quite simply, fun to read, full of life and lovely. If you enjoy a good poem that gets down and plays in the dirt once in a while, you should get to know the work of John Hollander; this is a fine starting point. **** ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Poetry, published by Thomson Gale on December 1, 2005. The length of the article is 4926 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Eight takes.(Yvor Winters: Selected Poems)(John Greenleaf Whittier: Selected Poems)(American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse)(Amy Lowell: Selected Poems)(Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems)(Muriel Rukeyser: Selected Poems)(Karl Shapiro: Selected Poems)(John Berryman: Selected Poems)(books from Library of America's American Poets Project)(Book Review)
Author: David Orr
Publication: Poetry (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 187Issue: 3Page: 233(15)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent, when exopsed.
John Hollander, The Head of the Bed (David R. Godine, 1974)

The Head of the Bed comes with a quick critical study afterwards written by Harold Bloom, and is a much better book for it. Hollander's pre-Raphaelite poetic cycle is quite readable on its own, but without Bloom, it's going to be nothing but a bunch of pretty descriptions, unless you happen to be up on some slightly obscure mythology and some modern commentary upon it. (It's also the first time I've ever seen the word shehkinah used in a piece of non-religious prose. An unexpected little pleasure.)

Bloom's surprisingly readable afterword aside, the poem itself is quite a nice little piece. Fifteen fifteen-line pieces, numbered rather than titled, in essence a single nightmare and Hollander's pontifications on its inspirations. The word "pre-Raphaelite" above is not used lightly; the description here comes thick, fast, and rococo. Which is, when you think about it, a rather impressive thing to do in only two hundred twenty-five total lines (consider the lengths of the epics by William Morris or Dante Gabriel Rossetti and you'll see where I'm coming from). The whole comes off as something of an anti-pastoral, pretty and ominous at the same time.

There are likely better places to start with the notoriously difficult Hollander, but this one reads extremely well regardless. **** (*** ½ if you get it without the Bloom commentary) ... Read more

Product Description
Poet, scholar, teacher, editor, and critic John Hollander has been a colossal presence in the American literary community for several decades. He is known for his mastery of prosody as well as for the wit, nuance, and charm of his poetry. Filled with literary, philosophical, and religious allusions, his work has been compared to the neoclassical writers of the seventeenth century. A difficult and rewarding poet, Hollander challenges his readers to bring everything they possess to the reading of each poem, as he does to the writing of them.
In The Poetry of Everyday Life, Hollander grapples with issues of poetry and the imagination. In a series of aphorisms, The book's title essay distinguishes between poetry's relations to the rest of life and other kinds of literature that merely deal literally with it. The essay introduces a range of other prose writing, from poetic fictions in prose (which Hollander calls "enigmatic narratives") to literary essays and memoirs of poets such as W. H. Auden, James Merrill, and Anthony Hecht. There are observations on the eternal problem of verse translation, as well as an interview with Langdon Hammer. Unburdened by theoretical agendas, both the short fables and the critical essays in this volume concern various aspects of the ways in which poetry can engage life most strongly when it most deeply regards itself.
John Hollander is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Types of Shape, Harp Lake, and In Time and Place, and criticism, including The Work of Poetry and The Gazer's Spirit. He is Sterling Professor of English, Yale University.
... Read more

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

Customer Reviews (1)

a poetically evocative and unusual anthology

John Hollander and Harold Bloom's wonderful anthology of poems follows the critic Northrop Frye's archetypally inflected theory of modes as set forth in Frye's seminal ANATOMY OF CRITICISM, a book I suspect is much less read than it used to be.Frye links literary themes and genres with seasons of the year; it seems intuitively right that Spring should be associated with courtship and travel, or Winter with elegies and farewells and storms.Bloom and Hollander do not mention Frye but hew happily to his
way of anatomizing human experience, an anatomy which beautifully fits the need of an anthology to articulate its contents.None of the poems they chose was recent enough to require permission; we have riches from poets like George Darley, John Davidson, Thomas Love Peacock, and many, many others.Keats's sonnet "Four seasons fill the measure of the year" is a moving spirit here, and Tennyson's stanzas from IN MEMORIAM "Ring out, wild bells" takes us "Beyond Winter."The anthology's title, of course, comes from the song in Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT.A poetic feast hat I found very stimulating when, at thirteen orso - in the early Sixties - it was given to me as a gift by my wise mother. ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Product Description
I Speak of the City is the most extensive collection of poems ever assembled about New York. Beginning with an early piece by Jacob Steendam (from when the city was called New Amsterdam) and continuing through poems written in the aftermath of 9/11, this anthology features voices from more than a dozen countries. It includes two Nobel Prize recipients, fifteen Pulitzer Prize winners, and many other recognizable names, but it also preserves the work of long-neglected poets who celebrate the wild possibilities and colossal achievements of this epic city.Poets capture New York's major moments and transformations, writing of Hudson's arrival, Stuyvesant's prejudice, and the city's astonishing growth and gentrification. They speak of the thrills of a skyscraper's observation deck and the privations of teeming tenements. They portray the immigrant experience at Ellis Island and the decay, fear, and unexpected kindness on a subway ride. They take place on sidewalks, bridges, and docks; in taxis, buses, and ferries; and even within nature.The Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, and other familiar landmarks are recast through the prism of individual experience yet still reflect the seeming invincibility of New York and its status as a cultural magnet for the freethinking and experimental.While certain subjects and themes can be found in all urban verse, poems about New York have their own restless rhythm and ever-changing style, much like the city itself. Whether writing sonnets, epics, or experimental or imagistic verse, each of these poets has been inspired by the marvels and madness, humor and heartbreak of an enduring city. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The finest collection of poems about New York ever assembled
Stephen Wolf has done remarkable work assembling this collection, which no doubt has taken him years to select and assemble.This is simply the single most complete poetry collection about New York City ever published. I purchased this collection as a gift for a family member and promptly had to purchase a new copy as the former purchase was soon too well-thumbed by this reviewer to make for quality gift giving.

The poems are organized chronologically beginning with a work written in 1659 when New York was still the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.What follows from there is an amazing body of work.Within these pages one experiences the history and changing face of The City, sociological growth, love and rapture, darkness and pain.Practically every aspect of New York life is presented: the experience of riding the subway, high society nightlife, extreme poverty, Central Park, Broadway, the extraordinary human pain involved in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, 9/11, and on and on.

The authors run the gamut from Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners to some lesser known (at least at the moment) modern poets. I continue to lose myself in both the beauty and ugliness contained in this work.If you know anyone who is a lover of New York or of poetry in general, then please do them the honor of buying this for them.Just make sure you buy an extra copy as you will wish to keep the first one for yourself.

Quick note: I purchased the paperback version and recommend that you do so as well. For the most part I prefer books of this kind to be hardcover, but the softcover is of such high quality paper and so beautifully printed that I do not believe the hardback is necessary. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The best...
...series of American poetry anthologies, easily. Almost a thousand pages of verse per volume, excellent selections, helpful biographies and notes. Volumes One and Two are better still as their contents were selected exclusively by the peerlessly tasteful John Hollander, who wisely gives about half the space to the half-dozen greats (Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, Melville, Longfellow, Bryant). These are among the best volumes of the invaluable Library of America series. Volumes Three and Four, covering the early 20th Century, are also available here and superb. Read these four through and this year will be twice as rich as last year. ... Read more