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Town & Country Matters: Erotica & Satirica
Book by John Hollander
69 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
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January 21, 2008
John Hollander, Town and Country Matters: Erotica and Satirica (David R. Godine, 1972)
John Hollander, long one of the foremost modern metrical poets, also has a wicked (and rather juvenile) sense of humor. That can best be seen in Town and Country Matters, a book put out in a small (5,000) edition by Godine in 1972. It collects a number of pieces of Hollander's erotic work, including his celebrated translations of Catullus, and one long piece of satire called "New York" (originally published in Harper's back when Harper's published long poems). Attractively printed in an oversized hardback, with erotic illustrations by Hollander's wife Anne, Hollander's book is exactly the kind of thing you'd want on display on your coffee table when your more hip guests show up.
The stuff inside is pretty fine, too. For metrical poetry, it reads like free verse in many places. The best rhymed poem is the one you can't tell is rhymed until you're halfway through.(He manages to make this work even in the Catullus translations.)
The one slipping point is "New York," which seems almost as if it were an attempt at an epic a la Tennyson or Browning. And from that perspective, it succeeds rather well; Hollander uses the lyric scope of the rhymed poem in a narrative style, telling the story (complete with soliloquies) of two friends who bump into one another while one is moving back to New York after fifteen years in exile and the other is leaving the city for good. The problem with it (as with much of Tennyson) is that the specific scenes go on too long; rhymed poetry often seems to rob the writer of any sense of timing at all, something in which Hollander shows in the shorter pieces he he is quite gifted, normally.
All in all, though, a fun little piece of work. Deadly hard to find these days thanks to the scarceness of the printing, but much joy is to be found within its pages.*** ½
John Hollander, long one of the foremost modern metrical poets, also has a wicked (and rather juvenile) sense of humor. That can best be seen in Town and Country Matters, a book put out in a small (5,000) edition by Godine in 1972. It collects a number of pieces of Hollander's erotic work, including his celebrated translations of Catullus, and one long piece of satire called "New York" (originally published in Harper's back when Harper's published long poems). Attractively printed in an oversized hardback, with erotic illustrations by Hollander's wife Anne, Hollander's book is exactly the kind of thing you'd want on display on your coffee table when your more hip guests show up.
The stuff inside is pretty fine, too. For metrical poetry, it reads like free verse in many places. The best rhymed poem is the one you can't tell is rhymed until you're halfway through.(He manages to make this work even in the Catullus translations.)
The one slipping point is "New York," which seems almost as if it were an attempt at an epic a la Tennyson or Browning. And from that perspective, it succeeds rather well; Hollander uses the lyric scope of the rhymed poem in a narrative style, telling the story (complete with soliloquies) of two friends who bump into one another while one is moving back to New York after fifteen years in exile and the other is leaving the city for good. The problem with it (as with much of Tennyson) is that the specific scenes go on too long; rhymed poetry often seems to rob the writer of any sense of timing at all, something in which Hollander shows in the shorter pieces he he is quite gifted, normally.
All in all, though, a fun little piece of work. Deadly hard to find these days thanks to the scarceness of the printing, but much joy is to be found within its pages.*** ½
Displaying 1 of 1 review