Jonathan Galassi

The fact what seems eternal’s
not eternal makes it
all the more lovely.
from The Vineyard by Jonathan Galassi

I loved this poem, this celebration of the ephemeral, the short lived beauty of this world, our selves. How we carefully tend the brevity of garden blooms, luxuriate in vistas of green vineyard vines or ocean, embrace lovers and friends knowing forces will separate us, that someday the sea will undulate the land we love, and the meadows will become abodes of the wealthy.

If I look our show more this window from this height
the vineyard’s like a flag by Johns
fluttering its long yellow-green stripes,
dark crevices between the sunstruck ones.
…
The vineyard leaves reach up like dancing hands
while the grapes hang down…
from the Vineyard by Jonathan Galassi

“Is a little temporary permanence/too much to ask?” Galassi asks. A bower of flowers to shelter against the waning years, the impending future that will erase what is now? The inevitable alteration of time and the changes we have wrought that will alter this world? The vineyard was here, the fact remains, even after it is gone.

In some ways, age has brought peace and acceptance. Youth was full of rage against the cruel world. Now he is old and free, his conscience clear. Or is it?

Tityrus tells me when I moan about the world
watching the daily cataclysms on TV,
tsunamis, famine, murders, rapine,
statues pulled down, people disappeared,
families dissected, freedoms vaporized.
Was every time as terrible as this,
but people didn’t know it?
…
But what is there to do
but lament, decry, resist, protest?
And hope somehow to be forgiven
for everything we haven’t done
(and, maybe, more, for what we have),
while we fret in our caves?

from the Vineyard by Jonathan Galassi

I look forward to rereading this poem for the reward of connecting to it with new insights, for the beauty of its images and message, for the way it lifted me and made me contemplate its ideas.

Thanks to A. A. Knopf for a free book. show less

"This is a love story. It's about the good old days, when men were men and women were women and books were books, with glued or even sewn bindings, cloth or paper covers, with beautiful and not-so-beautiful jackets and a musty, dusty, wonderful smell; when books furnished many a room, and their contents, the magic words, their poetry and prose, were liquor, perfume, sex and glory to their devotees."

Thus is the glorious beginning of this homage to books, authors, publishers and the business show more of bookmaking. Editor Paul Dukach comes up through the ranks, working for one titan of the business while developing a serious relationship with another titan. The common thread is the renowned poet, Ida Perkins, published by one and hotly sought by the other. Perkins adorns Rolling Stones' cover, cavorts with presidents and literati, and is breathlessly followed for her every pronouncement. (Oh, that the real world treated poets so!) Dukach, one of her most devoted readers, is suddenly called to Venice to meet the great lady. Perkins entrusts to him a secret task that could upend the publishing world and those he reveres.

Dukach is a fictional stand-in for author Jonathan Galassi, a poet in his own right, and editor in chief of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, fictionally rendered as Purcell & Stern. It is widely accepted that Roger Strauss is represented by Homer Stern as is James Laughlin as Sterling Wainwright. Readers in the know might also delight in finding doppelgangers of Susan Sontag, Jonathan Franzen, Elizabeth Bishop, Derek Wolcott and Seamus Heaney, among many others. The book is a bit long on exposition leaving a sense of remove rather than action, but delightedly so, with many a lovely turn of phrase.

One doesn't need to have an intimate knowledge of publishing to enjoy this book, but it certainly adds to its deliciousness.

I have dived now into Boris Kachka's "Hothouse", for the non-fictional history of FSG. show less

I'd read a positive review of this book, but I finished it only in the hope it would be better. Glad the author included a list of characters at the start because I couldn't keep track of ANY of them...the book was a one-note horn and I couldn't relate to the situations at all...

This novel was billed as "about writers' secrets, publishers' obsessions, manuscripts, love, loyalty, and betrayal." For the first 150 pages I felt really disappointed. But then, things picked up and I enjoyed it. Paul Dukach finally meets his idol, the poet Ida Perkins and learns the secret of her life and gets to publish her magnum opus posthumously. I was glad I read this book.