"In this essay on 'what the imagination has made of the phenomenon of echo, ' the author examines certain aspects of the figure of echo in light of their significance for poetry. Looking at echo in its literal, acoustic sense, echo in myth, and echo as literary allusion, Mr. Hollander concludes with a study of the rhetorical status of the figure of echo, and the ancient and newly interesting trope of metalepsis, or transumption, which it appears to...

A fully-annotated, two-volume work which presents the major literary achievements of English writers from the medieval period to the twentieth century together with examples of art from each era.

Offers thirty-two poems about animals by various poets, including Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, and Vicki Hearne. The writers include Blake, Dickinson, Tennyson, Yeats, Wordsworth, and Keats. The captivating paintings by Simona Mulazanni make every page a delight. And the subject, animals, big and small, wild and tame has an irresistible appeal to children. William Blake's The Tyger burns bright in the lush image that accompanies the verse. Hillaire...

In this book John Hollander offers a buoyant guided tour of American light verse-a tradition he pursues from Ambrose Bierce's sardonic The devil's dictionary quatrains to the latter-day comic inventions of Edward Gorey, Kenneth Koch, and James Merrill. Along the way, American wits gathers a rich harvest of couplets, clerihews, epigrams, parodies, burlesques, and other forms of fractured verse. The varied and often surprising list of contributors includes...

Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695), one of the best-loved French poets, is the foremost fabulist since Aesop, and his books have entertained generations of readers throughout France and the Western world. In Once Again, La Fontaine, Norman R. Shapiro brings his scholarly knowledge of fable lore and outstanding facility with English verse together to produce beautiful, witty translations. Adults will be captured by the subtle and sophisticated layers...