His change of professional interest was preceded by his beginning to write poems in the late 1940s (J.R. Ackerley was the first editor to publish one of Holloway's poems, in the
Listener around 1950).
Holloway's major concern is to preserve the integrity of individual vision and the pursuit of truth in a hostile, modern world. These concerns he explores in short lyric and longer narrative poems. His mastery of a variety of verse forms (sonnet, ballad, longer stanzas, terza rima, and free verse) is impressive. He dwells in his work on individual, political, and social life and, if anything, has become more open and optimistic in his view of human possibilities as he has proceeded. His most recent volume, Planet of Winds (1977), takes a fresher and livelier view of life than his first book of poetry, The Minute and Longer Poems (1956). In Holloway's poetic career we can see romantic vision struggling at times toward a religious sense of truth. His most recent long poem, Civitatula (about Cambridge), four of whose six parts appeared in New Lugano Review in 1979-1980, presents in places the authority of religious truth:
Here in the filtering light I am thinking how
The Philosopher falters to Christ: more
than at first a man can believe.
This is a free page. This page contains 196 words. This
biography contains 3,548 words (approx. 12 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our John Holloway Access Pass.
