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John Hollander Quotes

A long project is like a secret houseguest, hidden in your study, waiting to be fed and visited.

A long project is like a secret houseguest, hidden in your study, waiting to be fed and visited.

John Hollander
Long, Waiting, Secret

We speak of memorizing as getting something 'by heart,' which really means 'by head.' But getting a poem or prose passage truly 'by heart' implies getting it by mind and memory and understanding and delight.

John Hollander
Memories, Heart, Mean

Poetry gets to be the poetry of life by successfully becoming first the poetry of poetry.

John Hollander
Art, Poetry, Firsts

When Adam found his rib was gone He cursed and sighed and cried and swore And looked with cold resentment on The creature God has used it for.

John Hollander
Ribs, Gone, Resentment
John Hollander (1978). “Spectral emanations: new and selected poems”

To understand The signs that stars compose, we need depend Only on stars that are entirely there And the apparent space between them. There Never need be lines between them, puzzling Our sense of what is what.

John Hollander
Stars, Space, Needs
John Hollander (1972). “Selected poems”, Harvill Secker

Geoffrey Hill may be the strongest and most original English poet of the second half of our fading century, although his work is by no means either easy or very popular. Dense, intricate, exceedingly compact, his poetry has always had great visionary force.

John Hollander
Mean, Visionaries, Fading

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