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.
WINNER
| 2007 Frost Medal
"So Red"
Blossoms in the late October light, of such a saturated red:
what can flower now? only the now awakened dark and dull maroon--
like the unburnished metal of copper beeches shadowing itself--
of midsummer and spring burning the japanese maple's dying leaves
have fired the bursting into astonished color of the very self
of lateness, lastness which itself can never last longer than the few
moments--in this case October days--it takes to make itself intense in,
to put forth something of light that had either been waiting all along
to reveal itself or more likely, escaping its dead body of
leaf. It hits the road with a visual halloo as of a bright scarf
or a letting of arterial blood in a high ceremony--
annual, but so loud this year--of impatience and acknowledgement.
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.
Awards
WINNER
| 2007 Frost Medal
Excerpt
"So Red"
Blossoms in the late October light, of such a saturated red:
what can flower now? only the now awakened dark and dull maroon--
like the unburnished metal of copper beeches shadowing itself--
of midsummer and spring burning the japanese maple's dying leaves
have fired the bursting into astonished color of the very self
of lateness, lastness which itself can never last longer than the few
moments--in this case October days--it takes to make itself intense in,
to put forth something of light that had either been waiting all along
to reveal itself or more likely, escaping its dead body of
leaf. It hits the road with a visual halloo as of a bright scarf
or a letting of arterial blood in a high ceremony--
annual, but so loud this year--of impatience and acknowledgement.
