[Cleverness] is not a vice, indeed I regard it as something of a virtue, and in John Hollander's poems it is the clearest sign of his extraordinary gift. Spectral Emanations, a book of "new and selected poems" which, read consecutively, takes us backward through Hollander's whole career, offers an abundance of examples. In a well-known early work, "Aristotle to Phyllis," Hollander translates the sounds (and some sense) of a Mallarmé poem into English, thus: "La chair est triste, hélas, et j'ai lu tous les livres" / "This chair I trusted, lass, and I looted the leaves"; "le vide papier que la blancheur défend" / "A wide papyrus … blanched and deafened"; "Steamer balancant ta mâture" / "Stammering, balanced, the master"; and "Lève l'ancre pour une exotique nature" / "dipped pale ink of an exotic nature"—this last item actually managing to pick up a pun (ancre/encre) which is...