DESCRIPTION

Poetry. These poems illuminate both the beauty of living in the world, as well as the constant presence of grief and death as we go about our daily activities. As in Jean Hollander’s previous collections, these poems evoke memories of the past, or scenes and events so palpably presented, “they become alive.” This book celebrates our search for understanding as we go through life seeking love and pleasure, but encounter the loss of love, the death of a father, an ended trail. But this book also brings us a Lazarus returned to life, his mortality briefly overcome, or a long ago moment’s joy relived in the beginning of a new love, making us aware of the pleasure it is to feel and be alive, despite all sadness and grief.

AUTHOR BIO

Jean Hollander’s first poetry collection, Crushed into Honey, was published by Saturday Press. Moondog, another collection, was a winner in the Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Book Series; and her third collection, Organs and Blood, was published in 2008. Individual poems have appeared in Sewanee Review, The Literary Review, American Poetry, The American Scholar, etc., as well as in The Best American Poetry anthologies and other collections. She has also received numerous grants and awards. Hollander’s verse translation (with Robert Hollander) of Dante’s The Inferno was published by Doubleday to favorable reviews in The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Review of Books, and many other journals and media outlets. Purgatorio appeared in 2003. Paradiso was published in 200y and has already been very favorably reviewed as the translation for our time in The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, the London Times, and other publications. She was awarded the Gold Medal from the City of Florence for the translation. Hollander has taught literature and writing at Princeton University, Brooklyn College, Columbia University, and the College of New Jersey, where she directed Writers Conferences for 23 years. For the last ten years she has given classes in poetry writing at various institutions for students who go on to publish their work in journals and books.

Author City: HOPEWELL, NJ USA