John Hollander Letters (VMF077), 1970 | MSS Manuscripts

Hollander, John

John Hollander (October 28, 1929 - ) is an American poet and literary critic born in New York City. He attended Columbia and Indiana Universities and was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University.  After graduating, he supported himself for a while writing liner notes for classical music albums before returning to obtain a Ph.D. in literature.

He is the author of more than a dozen volumes of poetry, including Picture Window (2003), Figurehead: And Other Poems (1999), Tesserae (1993), Selected Poetry (1993), Harp Lake (1988), Powers of Thirteen (1983), Spectral Emanations (1978), Types of Shape (1969), and A Crackling of Thorns (1958), which was chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

His seven books of criticism include: The Work of Poetry (1997), Melodious Guile (1988), The Figure of Echo (1981), Rhyme's Reason (1981), Vision and Resonance (1975), Images of Voice (1970), and The Untuning of the Sky (1961).

He has edited numerous books, among them Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize (1996); The Gazer's Spirit (1995); Poems Bewitched and Haunted (2005); Animal Poems (1994); The Library of America's two-volume anthology Nineteenth Century American Poetry (1993); The Essential Rossetti (1990); Poems of Our Moment (1968); Selected Poems of Ben Jonson (1961); and The Wind and the Rain: An Anthology of Poems for Young People (with Harold Bloom, 1961). He was co-editor of The Oxford Anthology of English Literature (1973) and Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (with Anthony Hecht, 1967).

He has also written books for children and has collaborated on operatic and lyric works with such composers as Milton Babbitt, George Perle, and Hugo Weisgall.

Hollander's many honors include the Bollingen Prize, the Levinson Prize, and the MLA Shaughnessy Medal, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the current poet laureate of Connecticut, he has taught at Connecticut College, Hunter College, the CUNY Graduate Center, and Yale, where is currently the Sterling Professor emeritus of English.