Figurehead & other poems / by John Hollander.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hollander, John.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

vi, 89 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Figurehead and other poems

Place of Publication:

New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1999.

Summary:

This lively, varied, and technically brilliant book may be John Hollander's best. Full of bright, witty poems about appearance and reality, it makes wordplay into a fine art. And several astonishing meditations on painting cover a range from Velasques to Hopper to Sheeler to Magritte. Here is the beginning of the title poem:

BANG! (the starter's pistol) and we begin.

Whatever you may have staked upon the race

There's something you will have to come to know

We can hear nothing in the thundering din;

The voice of comment dies without a trace.

No matter what you're saying: there they go!

With Surface scratched (to nobody's chagrin)

The gelding Hope maintains a lightning pace

Beside whom Possibility seems slow.

Now randy Yang pursues the fleeing Yin

Unwitting of the truth we all must face:

Whatever begins in joy will end in woe;

What do they flee from that must be within

Themselves? is it others or time they chase,

Hoping to reap what they won't have to sow?

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0375404848

0375704337

OCLC:

39539042