Maybe Yale UP would consider a scholarly collection of articles on Hollander's influence, prefaced by an editor's introduction including these reminiscences?  

Also, did the great man leave any finished but unpublished essays (and poems?) behind that could perhaps be lightly edited and included as well?

Regards, --Tom
________________________________________
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Tom Bishop (ARTS ENG) [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 7:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: From Susanne Wofford

Hannibal, please do! After Auden's death  a wonderful volume of reminiscences came out, from people who had known him at various points in his life (a schoolboy who went to Iceland with him; Oliver Sacks recalling his naming a motorbike cover a "bike cosy"). I doubt any publisher would do such a thing now, but it would be good to have even a shadow of such a thing for John. I didn't know, for instance, that John played the piano, until Harry mentioned it, but of course he would have. He probably sang too, though I never heard him for more than a bar or two. At one point he and I approached some publishers with a plan for an anthology of "Poems about Music" for which he was to have written short headnotes. No publisher took it, alas, and it lapsed amid all his other projects, so the notes never got written, which is a great loss. Somewhere I have (or had!) the list of selections proposed. I must see if I can find it. His delight in good popular culture ("Moviegoing") was constant and vigorous.  I recall him lamenting that popular and art music had, at some point in the fairly recent past, ceased to talk to one another, and that this had been a great impoverishment to them both. He recited a brief snatch of Cole Porter to make the point, and then referenced Spenser using ballad stanzas for the arguments to his cantos in FQ — and then Bugs Bunny tweaking the nose of the Fat Baritone in a Chuck Jones cartoon. The scholar of many candles, all crammed into the Cupcake!

Tom


From: Hannibal Hamlin <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Reply-To: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Date: Saturday, 24 August 2013 12:48 AM
To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: Re: From Susanne Wofford

I'd like to collect all these wonderful tributes and send them on to Martha and Natalie, if no one objects. (If someone else has already done this, you can let me know off-list.)

Hannibal




On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 3:53 AM, andrew zurcher <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 23:47:29 -0400
From: Susanne Wofford <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>


John Hollander was a great teacher and colleague of mine during my graduate school years at Yale and during the beginning of my assistant professorship. I cannot begin to equal the beautiful comments of Ken Gross, who captures John amazingly, as have so many of the wonderful memories and comments on this listserve! I have so loved reading them and hearing from you all.

One memory that sticks with me about John was a tutorial that Debby Fried and I took from him -- we met bi-weekly in his office in Silliman (I think it was in Silliman, and I THINK it was the office that Wimsatt once had). I have no idea what the official topic of the tutorial was (Debby will no doubt remember), but we read widely in a huge range of Renaissance texts. As Ken mentions, this was during the time that he had just received the reprints of all the Renaissance mythologies, and he taught us how to plunge into them.  I always felt terribly embarrassed because he would pick up one of these mythologies and refer in learned ways to the author and his approach to allegorizing, and I never had any idea at all in advance of his disquisition who this author was.  It was quite an immersion, and I find that only now have I begun to realize how central these mythologies are and to return to them in my own work.

Debby and I would meet on off weeks to prepare our presentations and discussions with John during the tutorial.  No matter how hard we worked, John would always ask us a question we had not thought of, sometimes flooring us (at least I was often at a loss)!  We were in awe of his comments and analyses, and what we loved especially were his digressions. We agreed that he was the master of the digression, finding ways into material through the back door that were unexpected and truly illuminating.  Debby used to say that one John Hollander digression was worth ten prepared lectures by others, and this was what we both felt. The fact that the digressions took us away from the text at hand never mattered because it would open so many doors for us and always would return (with sometimes a bit of a bump) to the original line of poetry or stanza under discussion!

I think it was in this tutorial that John asked us whether we thought Shakespeare was gay.  We seriously meditated, wondering how he imagined we should answer such a question, and while we were thinking he laughed and said: "Not compared to Marlowe!" Then he launched into a reading of parts of Hero and Leander, talking of the amazing sensuousness of the water on Leander's body.  I have thought of this moment often because of course it was the poet's answer -- witty, a comment really on the verse not the biography, but open-minded, playful.

John was a great reader of parts of my first book -- he liked the section on ecphrasis and gave me lots of great ideas I hadn't thought of, and it meant a lot in that period to have someone like John admire my work.  I still have some of his old mimeographed sheets on emblem books and the Renaissance Ovid that I have copied over the years and given to my students.

I have not seen John in recent years, but it is a real pleasure to hear him recalled so powerfully.  I don't know if there will be a public commemoration, but if anyone on this list knows, do let me know.  Thanks to everyone for the memories your have sent in and especially for the comments on John's poetry, from which I have learned a lot.

Susanne Wofford



--
Hannibal Hamlin
Associate Professor of English
Author of The Bible in Shakespeare, now available through all good bookshops, or direct from Oxford University Press at http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199677610.do
Editor, Reformation
The Ohio State University
164 West 17th Ave., 421 Denney Hall
Columbus, OH 43210-1340
[log in to unmask]<[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>