#John Hollander

[likeniobe]

There was an end to hearts and rhymes, The old occasion rushed on past. Now? Unruled pages, and the vast Spaces of our unsinging times Within which these still measured lines Shall wander yet, slowly to mark A journey through a kind of dark In which a distance faintly shines.

john hollander, "valentine's day has come and gone" in in time & place, 1986

[power-chords]

[soulmaking]

"...to map a region one loves is a way of caressing it."

John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason

[a-ramblinrose]

My ongoing quest to read as many of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series as I can continues!!! I thought the theme was appropriate for February!

[poem-today]

A poem by John Hollander

By the Sound

Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound And gulls shrieked violently just out of sight. In those days I was living by the sound.

The silent water heard the light resound From all its wriggling mirrors, as the bright Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound.

Each morning had a riddle to expound; The wrong winds would blow leftward to the right, In those days I was living by the sound:

The dinghies sank, the large craft ran aground, Desire leapt overboard, perhaps in fright. Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound.

But seldom, in the morning’s lost-and-found Would something turn up that was free of blight. In those days I was living by the sound

The sky contrived, whose water lay around The place where I was dreaming by the light (Dawn rolled up slowly) what the night unwound In those days. I was living by the sound.

John Hollander (1929-2013)

[ruerecs]

PSA! you don't have to have smut in your fic to make it good.

for all the butthurt people in my reblogs, i’m literally a writer too. that’s literally why i made this post, never said you shouldn’t. just said you don’t have to? (all the people complaining about this post just know i’m laughing at your replies🙂‍↕️)

[angelinthepines]

pics i found donated at a resell store in arkansas

[sipitcutit]

Yes i smoke crack

[vertigoartgore]

Swamp Thing poster by Michael Zulli (1993).

[devouredmelancholy]

X

[nfrtrack7]

julia fox's artbook

ptsd (2016)

[likeniobe]

One evening in early spring Father gave us dimes: George planted his in the hard and sour ground of the yard, Hannah pasted hers to a card and drew crayoned wings About it, little Willie lent his to a playground  Friend who never paid him back, and I––I took the dime And let it lie among other coins in my pocket, Hearing it jingle, safely hidden away among The ringing gathering of its own kind, like itself All unspent and all quite blind to just what being saved Had meant––loss of glitter in the places of exchange, Of all the energies of getting and expense. Yet It could sing out: my dime could rhyme with its own echoes, Down inside a buried sound it was no death to hide.

“9. hidden rhymes” from powers of thirteen, john hollander

[power-chords]

The Observatory John Hollander, 1957

How vainly open eyes amaze Themselves with the synoptic gaze! And cloud the mediant air between The image and the object seen, Whose public face may never ask The one behind it to unmask. Better to see, I made my home This dark eye, a transparent dome.

To pierce with pools of mental light The pudency that shades the night, I turn my stare on hidden suns, Forbidden constellations; Each planet spinning in her niche; And bright elliptic visions which No intervening prospect mars: The winking habits of the stars.

Thus I, crazy astronomer, Whose heavens are this earth confer Among my lenses with the few Who sought for the forbidden view: Sweet Insight's Martyrs! each displays The Keyhole, emblem of his praise, Unlocked by only those who try The fitting key, the peering eye.

Where Privacy was put to rout Actaeon peeped true beauty out; Lot's wife risked all that she might know What salt had lost its savor so; Tom's blind eyes clasped, without remorse, Chaste whiteness straddled on a horse, And Orpheus turned about to see His noumenal Eurydice.

Ah, what a life with them I led! Bright data danced inside my head; By brambles, where I used to lie, Endangering the naked eye, I sped my floating sight to drift Round Sandra standing in her shift, To seize a patch of pink and white Undifferentiated light:

My mother's opera-glass laid bare The sensibilia lurking there, Sharp images that should have kept Secret the Things in which they slept; Like crystal thoughts that hidden dwell Within the gem's deceptive shell, Or mild affections, unbetrayed By the dark face of a dark shade.

Such innocency as was mine When, clinging to my neighbor's vine, I learned that all but blinding lies Are interdicted from the eyes, Infused our former State, where turned Two heavenly bodies; as each burned The other took his light therefrom: A perfect Planetarium!

The Beautiful, the virtuous Mean Were then permitted to be seen Before false opened eyes effaced Those bright inscriptions with distaste; And letters which enclosed the True By clothes were folded out of view, Whose blind impress upon the seal Made the apparent the unreal.

I, in my glassy Paradise, With fading sight anatomize The figures of the world, and trope As rod and staff, my telescope, Awaiting the descent of night When I shall read the darkened light Behind day's unperceiving pall; While seeing nothing, knowing all.

[filministic]

Peacemaker (2022-…)

[poem-today]

Higgledy-piggledy - The Art of the Double Dactyl

Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls, an anthology devoted to a novel form of poetry, edited by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander, with illustrations by Milton Glaser, was first published by Atheneum in 1967. The originator of this new brief genre was Anthony Hecht as the introduction explains, even offering a precise date – November 3, 1951 – and a precise place – the American Academy…

[witheringfawntobloom]

more from John Holland’s flickr