The Collected Poems of Anselm Hollo

Wry and witty poems from an avant-garde great, collected in one volume for the first time.

The Collected Poems of Anselm Hollo gathers over five decades of the poet’s multifaceted work into one elegant volume. All of Hollo’s trademark humor, wisdom, and charm is on display here for students and fans of contemporary poetry. Warm, insightful, and delightfully observant, this comprehensive collection from the author of over forty books serves as a reminder that poetry isn’t just an aspiration or avocation, but a way of life.

Publication date: August 8, 2023 

Format: Hardcover

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 1,128 pages 

ISBN: 9781566896856

Poet and translator Anselm Hollo (1934–2013) was born in Helsinki, Finland, and moved to London in 1958 to work in the Finnish section of the BBC World Service. He was in the foreground of the small press movement of the early 1960s, writing, giving readings, and publishing widely, all the while freelance translating poetry and prose from Finnish, Swedish, German, and French into his chosen language—English. After moving to the USA at the end of the decade, he became an itinerant professor, meeting and making friends with poets across America. In 1990, he began his professorship in the Writing and Poetics Department at Naropa University.

Hollo was the author of more than forty books of poetry, including Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: New and Selected Poems 1965–2000 (2001), which won the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award; Corvus (1995); Finite Continued (1980); and Sojourner Microcosms: New and Selected Poems 1959–1997 (1997). He also published a book of essays, Caws and Causeries: Around Poetry and Poets (1999). His many translations include works by Paavo Haavikko and Pentti Saarikoski, for whose Trilogy (2003) he was awarded the Harold Morton Landon Translation Prize by the Academy of American Poets. His final work, The Tortoise of History, was published posthumously in 2016.

“In this posthumous trove of brief, zestful poems, Hollo . . . relates the ‘incredible onslaught of being,’ seemingly dashing off each of these frenetic, fragmented vignettes in a fit of wild gusto.”

—Publishers Weekly

"The Collected Poems of Anselm Hollo is a monument to (and from) a life richly imbued with joy and wonder."

—Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi

“Hollo’s poems are, for the most part, gentle and sweet and self-effacing, and they often display a restraint that allows the circumstances of the world to unfold naturally.”

—Heavy Feather Review

“The bedrock solidness of Anselm Hollo’s poems makes as ever a place of refuge and delight in these meager times. Thank god for his humor, else we’d all be dead.”

—Robert Creeley

“Don’t miss anything at all by this strong poet.”

—Library Journal

“Post-hipster wit and lyricist Anselm Hollo has always had the world’s lightest touch when it comes to balancing a poem on the invisible wire between sentimental openness and ironic judgment.”

—San Francisco Chronicle