Life
Born to Jewish immigrant parents in New York, Hollander attended Columbia College of Columbia University, where he studied under Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling, and overlapped with Allen Ginsberg. After graduating, he supported himself for a while writing liner notes for classical music albums before returning to obtain a Ph.D. in literature.
Hollander has been a resident of Woodbridge, Connecticut, since the late 1980s. He has served as a judge for several high school recitation contests, and says he enjoys working with students on their poetry and teaching it. He stresses the importance of hearing poems out loud: "A good poem satisfies the ear. It creates a story or picture that grabs you, informs you and entertains you."
He is known also for his translations from Yiddish.
Hollander usually writes his poems on a computer, but if inspiration strikes him when he's away from it, "I've been known to start poems on napkins and scraps of paper, too.
Hollander influenced poet Karl Kirchwey, who studied under Hollander at Yale. Hollander taught him that it was possible to build a life around the task of writing poetry. Kirchwey recalled Hollander's passion:
Since he is a poet himself ... he conveyed a passion for that knowledge as a source of current inspiration.He also has served in the following positions, among others: member of the board, Wesleyan University Press (1959–62); editorial assistant for poetry, Partisan Review (1959–65); contributing editor, Harper's Magazine (1969–71).
Read more about this topic: John Hollander
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.”
—Mother Teresa (b. 1910)
“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)