John Hollander (born October 28, 1929 in New York City) is a Jewish-American poet and literary critic. As of 2007, he is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University. Previously he taught at Connecticut College, Hunter College, and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Born to Jewish immigrant parents in New York, he attended Columbia University where he studied under Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling, and had Allen Ginsberg as one of his classmates. After graduating, he supported himself for a while writing liner notes for classical music albums before returning to obtain a Ph.D. in literature.
Hollander has been a resident of Woodbridge, Connecticut since the late 1980s. He has served as a judge for several high school recitation contests, and says he enjoys working with students on their poetry and teaching it. He stresses the importance of hearing poems out loud: "A good poem satisfies the ear. It creates a story or picture that grabs you, informs you and entertains you."
He is known also for his translations from Yiddish.
Hollander usually writes his poems on a computer, but if inspiration strikes him when he's away from it, "I've been known to start poems on napkins and scraps of paper, too.