Tales Told of the Fathers

John Hollander

I am an unabashed fan of the artsy, earthy formalism of John Hollander. I've read a good number of his books over the past few years, though by no means all of them. But, of those I've read, of his books for adults, I think Tales Told of the Fathers may be the best of them.

Hollander is always a fine poet. What underscores it here, makes it just a tad better than usual, is the book's readability; Hollander's love of wordplay, alliteration, and punning is the same here as in his other works, but there's an extra added dimension, an ineffable something that helps these hundred pages to simply flow better than many of his other book-length collections. I have no idea what this quality is, or why it manifests itself here more than it did in, say, Town and Country Matters. These are fun poems, dealing with matters of the mundane, though surely able to stand up to as much scrutiny to which any doctoral candidate looking for dissertation fodder would subject them. But most readers won't be concerned with that; these poems are, quite simply, fun to read, full of life and lovely. If you enjoy a good poem that gets down and plays in the dirt once in a while, you should get to know the work of John Hollander; this is a fine starting point.