| 1958 | A Crackling of Thorns. W.H. Auden selected Hollander's first collection for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Hollander's controlled reflections of literary and mythological subjects include admired works such as "Icarus Before Knossus," "Susanna's Song," and "Enter Machiavel, Waving His Tail." Born in New York City, Hollander graduated from Columbia and received a Ph.D. from Indiana University. He has been a faculty member at Connecticut College, Hunter College, and Yale. |
| 1962 | Movie-Going and Other Poems. Hollander's collection takes a nostalgic look at the movie houses of the poet's youth and the redemptive nature of illusions. A similar evocation of the poet's boyhood in New York City would follow in Visions from the Ramble, published in 1965. |
| 1971 | The Night Mirror. Hollander's collection is noteworthy for demonstrating a more direct poetic voice, treating emotional experiences in poems such as "Under Cancer." |
| 1975 | Tales Told of the Father. The collection contains the long poem "The Head of the Bed," which has been interpreted as a despairing commentary on the state of modern poetry. |
| 1976 | Reflecting on Espionage. Ostensibly a book-length poem about espionage, the volume is actually a witty commentary on art and artists. |
| 1978 | Spectral Emanations: New and Selected Poems. The title poem of this collection is a demanding sequence concerning the attempt to combine lessons of color into the "white light of truth." Hollander would offer similar exploratory meditations in his next collection, Blue Wine and Other Poems (1979). |
| 1999 | Figurehead & Other Poems. Hollander animates a number of speakers in this collection, including Sappho, Arachne, Minerva, and Robert Browning's duchess in "My Last Duchess," who reveals that she was not murdered at all but is living peacefully in a convent. |
The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
