John Hollander Quotes

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

  John Hollander

  Long, Waiting, Secret

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

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

  John Hollander

  Art, Poetry, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• 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”

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin