17 pages • 34 minutes read
Swan and Shadow
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Background
Literary Context
Even when written in blank, unmetered verse, Hollander’s poems are often structured, in closed forms. “Swan and Shadow” is a calligram, which Hollander referred to as a “graphematic” emblem. In his critical work, Rhyme’s Reason, all descriptions of poetic forms are composed in the respective form, such as the villanelle, sonnet, or haiku. Hollander’s collection Powers of Thirteen (1983) is a long sequence of 169 (13 × 13) 13-line stanzas with 13 syllables in each line. Hollander liked the constraints of closed forms, their challenge whetting rather than inhibiting his creativity. Hollander’s poetic influences were also masters of poetic forms, such as the 17th-century poet George Herbert, whose shape poetry is famous, and 18th-century poet Alexander Pope, who mastered the couplet and the epigram. Hollander’s preference for formal poetry and his choice of subjects somewhat distinguished him from many of his peers. His poems tend to be non-autobiographical, which contrasts with the informal and confessional poetry dominating American literature in the 1960s and 1970s.
However, Hollander’s love for forms and his meditative, witty poems are far from old-fashioned and traditional. He often fused formal and postmodernist elements to create his poetry; for example, in “Swan and Shadow,” there is no punctuation and only occasional capitalization. Hollander was also careful to distinguish his calligrams form the form known as concrete poetry, where the graphic representation of a poem is more important than the meaning of the words. Hollander’s calligrams are meaningful even when laid out as straight lines with regular lineation, thus showing the importance of both form and content.
Biographical Context
Hollander’s interest in the visual arts, Jewish lore and literature, and literary criticism gave his poems their distinctive qualities. Further, at the time Hollander attended Columbia University, the faculty included prominent literary figures, such as Lionel Trilling (critic) and Mark Van Doren (poet). Among Hollander’s peers was the poet Louis Simpson. Hollander was also friends with Allen Ginsberg. All these literary influences meant Hollander was immersed in both writing and studying poetry. His poems often have a self-reflexive quality, in the sense that they are poems reflecting on the art of poetry. With Ginsberg, Hollander shared a love for the spoken word, the idea that poetry is meant to be easy to say. That is why Hollander’s poems, though intellectual, have a fluid, rhythmic quality, as in “Swan and Shadow” where the words flow into each other.
His interest in the visual arts was linked with his love for the architecture of poetry, as evidenced in Types of Shape, the collection of calligrams that holds “Swan and Shadow.” In “Swan and Shadow,” the visual element to Hollander’s poetry is further enhanced: The attention to the visual image parallels a still life, while the panning of the poet’s lens across the scene is like a movie shot.
According to Hollander, his upbringing exposed him to multiple art forms and their interplay. His mother used to play the piano at home while he was a child, and music was an integral part of their life, which ignited his interest in the spoken word. Hollander also counted his Jewish heritage as a major influence on his poetry. His translations from Yiddish into English gave Hollander a keen sense of both languages. Hollander was also inspired by the importance of numbers (as seen in the Powers of Thirteen) and the written and spoken word in Jewish literature, including the Old Testament.
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