Book

Hollander, John.

The gazer's spirit : poems speaking to silent works of art / John Hollander.

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1995.

xii, 380 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm

This book is a gallery of words and images that celebrates the sister arts of poetry and painting. John Hollander, the eminent poet and critic, has selected more than fifty works of painting, print, drawing, photography, and sculpture, from antiquity to the present, and paired them with poems that have addressed the images in their verses. The result is an illuminating and ingeniously organized chronicle of words and images in conversation, as well as a powerful introduction to how, across Western culture, great writers have been inspired by artists' images. Hollander opens the book with an extended critical introduction to the ecphrastic tradition, and closes it with one of his own poems about Monet's La route de ferme St-Simeon, a moving dialogue between seeing and saying, silence and representation. Lavishly illustrated, this book is a powerful witness to the dynamic relations between the visual and verbal that are at the heart of Western culture.

Art -- Poetry.

Poetry.

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Jacopo Sadoleto (1477-1547), "The Poem of Jacobus Sadoletus on the Statue of Laocoon" / Anon., Laocoon -- Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), "Sonnet" / Titian, Portrait of -- Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Allen Tate, "Sonnet" / William Lescaze, Portrait of Hart Crane. Richard Howard, "Nadar" / Adrien Tournachon, Portrait of Nadar -- Ben Jonson (1572-1637), "The Mind of the Frontispiece to a Book" / Renold Elstrack, Engraved Title Page of Sir Walter Ralegh's History of the World -- Sir Richard Lovelace (1618-58), "To My Worthy Friend Mr. Peter Lilly" / Sir Peter Lely, Charles I and the Duke of York -- Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), "To the Fragment of a Statue of Hercules" / Anon., Torso Belvedere -- William Wordsworth (1770-1850), "Elegiac Stanzas" / Sir George Beaumont, Piel Castle in a Storm -- Washington Allston (1779-1843), "On the Group of the Three Angels Before the Tent of Abraham, by Rafaelle, in the Vatican" / Raphael, Abraham and the Angels.

Table of contents

Publisher description

94025606

0226349497

9780226349497

30667275

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811 Hollande