Reflections on Espionage: The Question of Cupcake

by John Hollander

Book Overview

This book-length poem by one of the major poets of our era is structured as a series of messages transmitted by a master spy to the director of spy operations and to a number of his fellow spies. The spy speaks of his own alienation and sense of purposelessness as a secret agent--a metaphor for a human existence committed to ordering, deciphering, and making sense of a world of random signs. First published in 1974, the book is now reprinted with...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300079664
• ISBN13: 9780300079661
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 104 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Another excellent Hollander title.

John Hollander, Reflections on Espionage: The Question of Cupcake (Atheneum, 1976) You never really know what you're going to get from a John Hollander book of poetry. In this case, you get a title that says "satire," or puts you in mind of the Power Puff Girls or some like. But once you've flipped open the first page, what you find is anything but; Hollander takes you on a trip through the obsessive mind of a spy (code named, obviously, Cupcake), through nine moths of his reports both to superiors and colleagues. The effect is quite startling, and wonderful. There are some technical problems with the poetry, mostly in the line breaks, which are inconsistent and often irrational; the notes section (read it, for it's actually a part of the work, rather than being a real notes section) mentions in passing that the whole thing is actually rhythmic blank verse. True most of the time, but breaks in various places, leading one to believe perhaps more care could have been taken with the line breaks overall without sacrificing any of the readability herein. That is, however, something of a minor quibble in a work of this magnitude. Another definite winner from John Hollander, well worth seeking out. ****

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Kudos to Yale University Press for making this wonderful poem available again. Both an increasingly absorbing spy narrative and a roman a clef about modern poetry and poets, this poem is typical of Hollander's intellectual playfulness, not to mention his immense erudition. It stands out among his poems, however, both for its involvement of the reader within its games, and for its gesture toward "lower" literary genres. A new introduction gives the poet's reflections on the work's genesis, and notes are provided at the end for those who wish to cheat.