Braided River

Anselm Hollo was the author of more than thirty books, not including his literary translations. His work has been widely anthologized and translated into Finnish, French, German, Swedish, and Hungarian. He received a NEA Fellowship, two grants from The Fund for Poetry, the Government of Finland’s Distinguished Foreign Translator’s Award, The San Francisco Poetry Center’s Book Award, and The Academy of American Poets’ Translation Prize. He taught at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He died in 2013.

• & It Is a Song (1965)& I Heard a Man, Telling the SkyMessage from the BorderSong of the TuskMy AncestorsBlue Dream Movie in Eleven TakesFaces & Forms (1965)Late: the Aspen HourA New Ballade of Lost LadiesThe Mosaic Standard from UrThe Going-On Poem (1966)The Claim (1966)The Man in the Treetop Hat (1968)Requiem for a PrincessFirst Ode for a Very Young LadyA Lion or a Flower (for Mayakovsky, I Thought)And How It Goes The Coherences (1968)JourneyThe Lights Coming Onin the RoomsStrung OutBack through the YearsThe Day’s EventsDream Rain Dance“All the Way to Morning Town”The OneTumbleweed (1968)The MonsterThe WreckMaya (1970)On the Occasion of Becoming an EchoThe Walking CatfishIn the Long View of Human History Man’s Reliance on Fossil Fuels Can Be but a Short EpisodeThe Moving Houses Are Very Movingas They Move Slowly into the SeaBuffalo – Isle of Wight Power Cable Sensation 27 (1972)MomentSpring Cleaning Greens (1973)In Northernmost MichiganBlack Book (1974)Knife in the WaterSeized with Unrest, Winging through the DarkLingering Tangos (1977)On and Off the Road Baltimore – IthacaNo Complaints (1983)Fool’s ParadiseFinite Continued (1980)The Terrorist SmilesHard as NailsObject, NowOutlying Districts (1990)Who Wrote ThisPygmy HutLighthouseThe Dada LetterNear Miss Haiku (1990)Monumentally Self-DeludedAn EekCorvus (1993)Not a Form at All but a State of Mindrue Wilson Monday (2000)123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566Ralhar (2004)The Long Hiss of Time“So you start out you come across some writing …”“listen / to the long hiss of time …”On Reading Certain Novels“Thirty years later …”“wind gusts changes sky from blue to white …”“see laughing delegates …”From the Sayings of Chairman TedThese Bookshelves a Forest of PoetryCat PomeEver PoemRalharMardiLyckan‘“How is it far if you can think of it?” …’“riding the thermals all the time BORING …”“Moving the books was like moving brain cells …”“it is 9 p.m. and you’re not up for it …”‘“I cannot be making a mistake” hellip;’“walking down oldtime hotel lobby corridor …”“was born coiffed (né coiffé) …”“brain hovers above keyboard …”“wave motion green as text …”“excellent excellent …”“The Royal Hunt of the Sun just a memory …”“That mouse that mouse …”“The tastemakers will go on …”SatyriconGoing Home“puzzled / watching people …”A Double for Jack Collom“a lot of commotion kerplunk and galumph …”“after a third go-around with The Emperor …”“They sit on some of the furniture …”“O to be in Nueva York …”A Bit of Hades (2004)“faintly a brabble all cadence no words …”“down down into the city of the dead …”“can only love you like a sister she says …”“reel along in the murk …”Remembering how Paul Blackburn Made Those Old Troubadours Sound

Anselm Hollo wrote The Empress Hotel Poems (there were six of them), which appeared in Jon Silkin’s magazine, Stand, in England, in 1966. I was astounded by them then, for they proposed, for the first time in my experience, that it was possible for an American poetic idiom to be adopted by a European (writing in English). It is impossible for someone under 40 (say) writing poetry in America today to imagine the narrowness of possibility allowed by the literary climate in England at that time. There were some British poets (Tom Raworth and Lee Harwood being the outstanding examples) who had the nous to overcome those severe limits, but for me, and I’m sure for many others, it was Anselm Hollo’s work that represented a crucial breakthrough, especially because Stand was a magazine with a relatively large distribution, while Raworth and Harwood were still “underground” poets at that time. What The Empress Hotel Poems illuminated was the simple fact that Kerouac, Ginsberg, O’Hara and company, were not simply icons of a seemingly fabulous culture beyond our reach, but were potential models for the future of a new poetics.