John Hollander (October 28, 1929 – August 17, 2013) was an American poet and literary critic. At the time of his death, he was

Sterling Professor Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a tenured faculty member considered the best in his or her field. It is akin to the rank of university professor at other universities. The appointment, made by the ...

Emeritus of English at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, having previously taught at Connecticut College,

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

, and the Graduate Center,

CUNY , mottoeng = The education of free people is the hope of Mankind , budget = $3.6 billion , established = , type = Public university system , chancellor = Fél ...

Life

Hollander was born in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, to Muriel (Kornfeld) and Franklin Hollander, Jewish immigrant parents. He was the elder brother of Michael Hollander (1934–2015), a distinguished professor of architecture at Pratt Institute. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and then Columbia College of Columbia University, where he studied under

Mark Van Doren Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was 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 thin ...

and

Lionel Trilling Lionel Mordecai Trilling (July 4, 1905 – November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, ...

, and overlapped with

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

(Hollander's poetic mentor),Yezzi, David, ''The New Criterion'', vol. 32, October 2013. Jason Epstein, Richard Howard, Robert Gottlieb,

Roone Arledge Roone Pinckney Arledge Jr. (July 8, 1931 – December 5, 2002) was an American sports and news broadcasting executive who was president of ABC Sports from 1968 until 1986 and ABC News from 1977 until 1998, and a key part of the company's rise t ...

, Max Frankel, Louis Simpson and

Steven Marcus Steven Paul Marcus (December 13, 1928 – April 25, 2018) was an American academic and literary critic who published influential psychoanalytic analyses of the novels of Charles Dickens and Victorian pornography. He was George Delacorte Professo ...

. At Columbia, he joined the Boar's Head Society. After graduating, he supported himself for a while writing liner notes for classical music albums before returning to obtain an MA in literature, and then a PhD from

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

. Hollander resided in Woodbridge, Connecticut, where he served as a judge for several high-school recitation contests, and said he enjoyed working with students on their poetry and teaching it. With his ex-wife, Anne Loesser (daughter of pianist Arthur Loesser; married 1953–77), he was the father of writer

Martha Hollander Martha Hollander (born March 24, 1959) is an American poet and art historian. Life She is the daughter of the poet John Hollander and the fashion historian Anne Hollander. Hollander graduated from Yale University in 1980, with a B.A. ''cum laud ...

and uncle of the songwriter

Sam Hollander Sam Hollander is an American songwriter. He has collaborated with the likes of Panic! at the Disco, One Direction, Fitz and the Tantrums, Train, Weezer, Blink-182, Ringo Starr, Def Leppard, Katy Perry, Carole King, Jewel, Pentatonix, Daughtry, ...

. He married Natalie Charkow in 1981. Hollander died at Branford, Connecticut, on August 17, 2013, at the age of 83.

Poetic career

Hollander stressed the importance of hearing poems out loud: "A good poem satisfies the ear. It creates a story or picture that grabs you, informs you and entertains you".Boynton, Cynthia Wolfe, "Venerable Poet's Words To a Pop Music Beat", ''The New York Times'', Connecticut and the Region section, February 10, 2008, p. 6. The poet needs to be aware of the "sound of sense; the music of speech". To Hollander, verse was a kind of music in words, and he spoke eloquently about their connection with the human voice. Also known for his translations from

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

. Hollander usually wrote his poems on a computer, but if inspiration struck him, he offered that, "I've been known to start poems on napkins and scraps of paper, too." Hollander was considered to have technical poetic powers without equal, as exampled by his "Powers of Thirteen" poem, an extended sequence of 169 (13 × 13) unrhymed 13-line

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...

s with 13 syllables in each line. These constraints liberated rather than inhibited Hollander's imagination, giving a fusion of

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...

s that enabled Hollander to conceive this work as "a perpetual calendar". Hollander also composed poems as "graphematic"

emblem An emblem is an abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a person, like a king or saint. Emblems vs. symbols Although the words ''emblem'' and '' symbol'' are often use ...

s (''Type of Shapes'', 1969) and epistolary poems (exampled in ''Reflections on Espionage'', 1976), and, as a critic (in ''Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form'', 1975), offered telling insights into the relationship between words and music and sound in poetry, and in metrical experimentation, and 'the lack of a theory of graphic prosody'. Hollander influenced poets Todd LaRoche and Karl Kirchwey, who both studied under Hollander at

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

. Hollander taught him that it was possible to build a life around the task of writing poetry. Kirchwey recalled Hollander's passion: 'Since he is a poet himself ... he conveyed a passion for that knowledge as a source of current inspiration.' Hollander also served in the following positions, among others: member of the board, Wesleyan University Press (1959–62); editorial assistant for poetry, '' Partisan Review'' (1959–65) and a contributing editor, of ''

Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...

'' (1969–71). and also commenced his other role as a poetry critic. Hollander's poetry has been set to music by

Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia t ...

, Elliott Carter, and others; in 2007 he collaborated with the

Eagles Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...

, allowing them use of his poem "An Old Fashioned Song" to create the song " No More Walks in the Wood".

Awards and honors

*2006: Appointed

Poet Laureate A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ...

of the State of ConnecticutSTATE OF CONNECTICUT, Sites º Seals º Symbols
; ''Connecticut State Register & Manual''; retrieved on January 4, 2007 (term ended in 2011) *2006:

Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award The Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award is awarded to scholars who have made a lasting contribution to the art and science of versification. The award was named after the poet, critic, and translator Robert Fitzgerald. It was established in 1999 at the ...

*2002: Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement *1990: MacArthur Fellowship *1983: Bollingen Prize for ''Powers of Thirteen''. *1979: elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Literature *1958:

Yale Series of Younger Poets The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the Uni ...

for his first book of poems, ''A Crackling of Thorns'', chosen by W. H. Auden.

Works

*''A Crackling of Thorns'' (1958) poems *''The Untuning of the Sky'' (1961) *''The Wind and the Rain'' (1961) editor with Harold Bloom *''Movie-Going'' (1962) poems *''

Philomel Philomel is another name for Philomela, a character from Greek mythology. It may refer to: Nature * A nightingale Arts and Letters * An abbreviated form of the name Philomela, a figure in Greek mythology often invoked as a symbol in literature. * ...

'' (1964) "cantata text" for the composition of the same name by American composer

*''Visions from the Ramble'' (1965) poems *''Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls'' (1967) with

Anthony Hecht Anthony Evan Hecht (January 16, 1923 – October 20, 2004) was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, an ...

*''Types of Shape'' (1969, 1991) poems *''Images of Voice'' (1970) criticism *''The Night Mirror'' (1971) poems *''Town and Country Matters'' (1972) poems *''The Oxford Anthology of English Literature'' (1973), co-editor *''The Head of the Bed'' (1974) poems *''Tales Told of the Fathers'' (1975) poems *''Vision and Resonance'' (1975) criticism *''Reflections on Espionage'' (1976) poems *''Spectral Emanations: New and Selected Poems'' (1978) *''Blue Wine'' (1979) poems *''The Figure of Echo'' (1981) criticism *''Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse'' (1981, 1989, 2001, 2014) manual of prosody *''Powers of Thirteen'' (1983) poems *''In Time and Place'' (1986) poems *''Harp Lake'' (1988) poems *''Melodious Guile: Fictive Pattern in Poetic Language'' (1988) *''Some Fugitives Take Cover'' (1988) poems *''The Essential Rossetti'' (1990), editor *''Tesserae and Other Poems'' (1993) *''Selected Poetry'' (1993) *''American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century'' (1993), editor *''Animal Poems'' (1994) poems *''The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art'' (1995) criticism *''Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize'' (1996), editor *''The Work of Poetry'' (1997) criticism *''The Poetry of Everyday Life'' (1998) criticism *''Figurehead and Other Poems'' (1999) poems *''Sonnets. From Dante to the present'' (2001), Everyman's library pocket poets. *''Picture Window'' (2003) *''American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse'' (2003), editor *''Poems Bewitched and Haunted'' (2005), editor *''A Draft of Light'' (2008), poems *''The Substance of Shadow: a Darkening Trope in Poetic History'' (2016), lectures

References

External links

Review of 'Stanley Cavell and the Claim of Reason'
*
Brief biographyJohn Hollander at Random House
* John Hollander Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hollander, John 1929 births 2013 deaths Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters American male poets Bollingen Prize recipients Formalist poets Jewish American poets American literary critics Hunter College faculty Graduate Center, CUNY faculty Connecticut College faculty Poets Laureate of Connecticut Columbia College (New York) alumni MacArthur Fellows Poets from Connecticut Poets from New York (state) Yale Sterling Professors Yale University faculty Yale Younger Poets winners 20th-century American poets 20th-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers