rue Wilson Monday: Poems

by Anselm Hollo

Here are Anselm Hollo's notes on rue Wilson Monday : "When I was invited to spend five months in France, in an old hotel long frequented by artists and writers, I decided to write something that would NOT be your typical 'sabbatical poem'--that familiar rumination, by the U.S. American academic (temporary) expatriate, 'on' the Mona Lisa, Baudelaire's grave, or 'how different all this is from back home in Missoula Montana!' "I believe that rue Wilson Monday turned out to be something possibly more a hybrid of day book, informal sonnet sequence, and extended, 'laminated' essay-poem, with an aesthetic (dare I say lyricism?) perhaps better understood by our younger generation of poets than by their predecessors, those mid-twentieth-century traveloguists. Works I found particularly inspiring in my endeavor were Ted Berrigan's The Sonnets and Edward Dorn's Abhorrences--books that will make me chuckle and weep to the end of my days. "The book received its title from French poet Guillaume Apollinaire's 1913 poem 'Lundi rue Christine' (Monday rue Christine), a Cubist work composed almost entirely out of verbatim speech from various conversations in a cafe.M
"In rue Wilson Monday, similar conversations take place in and around my head during that stay (August 1998/January 1999) at the Hotel Chevillon, an artists' and writers' retreat in the small town of Grez-sur-Loing. Back in 1876, Robert Louis Stevenson came to visit his cousin Robert at this hotel, whose present street address is 114 rue Wilson, "La Rue Grande" (Main Street) back then. "To invite the reader to participate in my often elliptical conversations with these folks, I have provided footnotes, and these too are an integral part of the poem and the conversation."

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo was a Finnish poet and translator. He lived in the United States from 1967 until his death in January of 2013.

Paavo Anselm Aleksis Hollo was born in Helsinki, Finland. His father, Juho Aukusti Hollo (1885–1967) — who liked to be known as "J. A." Hollo — was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, an essayist, and a major translator of literature into Finnish. His mother was Iris Antonina Anna Walden, a music teacher and daughter of organic chemist Paul Walden. He lived for eight years in the United Kingdom producing three children: Hannes, Kaarina, and Tamsin, with his first wife, poet Josephine Clare. He was a permanent resident in the United States from the late 1960s until his death. At the time of his death and he resided in Boulder, Colorado with his second wife, artist Jane Dalrymple-Hollo.

Hollo published more than forty titles of poetry in the UK and in the US, in a style strongly influenced by the American beat poets.

In 1965, Hollo performed at the "underground" International Poetry Incarnation, London. In 2001, poets and critics associated with the SUNY Buffalo POETICS list elected Hollo to the honorary position of "anti-laureate", in protest at the appointment of Billy Collins to the position of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Hollo translated poetry and belles-lettres from Finnish, German, Swedish and French into English. He was one of the early translators of Allen Ginsberg into German and Finnish.

Hollo taught creative writing in eighteen different institutions of higher learning, including SUNY Buffalo, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 1985, he has taught in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where he held holds the rank of Full Professor.[2]

Hollo became ill, and during the summer of 2012, had brain surgery.

Several of his poems have been set into music by pianist and composer Frank Carlberg.

Poets Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley named their son Anselm Berrigan after Hollo.

Hollo died from post operative pneumonia on January 29, 2013 at the age of 78.