Andrea Hollander

"All these poems are graceful and enchanting in their directness. I think Hollander's poems always step off the main road and walk along on the shoulder or over on the railroad bed and then come back to meet the road farther on. She has a way of writing that travels a parallel track with ordinary conversational language."

—Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate, 2004- 2006

 

"I finished reading And Now, Nowhere But Here yesterday—it is among the best books this year. Every time I go back to a poem, it is brand new and filled with energy. That's what writing the truth can do!

—Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate, 2019

 

"These intimate, frank, and wise poems take me into their confidence in the most gratifying and exciting way, make me feel less lonely as a human being on this mortal planet, and hold me just as they hold their truths."

—Jeanne Marie Beaumont, winner in the National Poetry Series for Placebo Effects 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Some days, I think that hope is such a long way away, and then I read a poet like this—and life is in full gear. This book means so much to me. And will be saved to read again."
—Grace Cavalieri, The Washington Independent Review of Books

 

"There are many gifts we get from experiencing art, from reading a great book, but one of the most important gifts an artist can give is that of vulnerability. With this new collection, Hollander is offering such a gift. Now it is up to us to be brave enough to receive it."
—Matthew Dickman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Andrea Hollander knows what to hold back as she lets us in. And so we willingly bring ourselves into her subtly registered emotional world. There's a lovely blend of qualities at work here -- an unsparing eye, and a heart that humanizes what that eye sees."
—Stephen Dunn

 

"Hollander is a writer of great presence, dazzling while unnerving the reader with her uncanny ability to depict human relationships in poems that explore life in all of its gritty agony and beauty."
—Sonja James, The Journal

 

 

 

 

 

"I wish that other people would write about personal experience the way Hollander does: there's so much wisdom and depth in her poems that I'm forced more deeply into my own life, and emerge knowing things I didn't know, or didn't know I knew."
—Martha Collins

 

"Woman in the Painting is Hollander's strongest, most integrated narrative yet and makes compelling reading. Rich in recollection and reflection ..."
—Suzanne Blair, The Philadelphia Inquirer

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Hollander's impeccable conversational diction does just what a poem should do; it raises the hairs on the nape of your neck."
—Maxine Kumin

 

"The Other Life advances Andrea Hollander into our foremost poetic ranks."
—Fred Chappell, The News and Observer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"In one of the most moving poems in this moving book, Andrea Hollander states, 'I have been so many places / and I don't know anything.' But this poet does know the heart and speaks for it and from it with a simplicity and honesty rare at any time.
—Mark Jarman

 

"Through her artfully unadorned language, Hollander has found the means to say the unsaid."
—Bill Jones, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Again and again, these remarkable poets carve out a place for themselves and their work. When She Named Fire is substantive, weighing in at 461 poems, but it is not unmanageable. This text belongs on a nightstand as easily as it belongs in American Poetry 230—a credit to editor Andrea Hollander."
—Erica Wright, ForeWord Magazine

 

Political exigency, though present at spare moments, largely steps back to make way for more complicated, contemporary examinations of a woman's world. ... When She Named Fire examines women's lives with a marked consistency of skill."
—Rachel Mennies, Coldfront Magazine