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" Eugenio Montale - born in Genoa in 1896, died in Milan, 1981 - is one of the twentieth-century Europeans who has spoken most meaningfully to American and British poets. "

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" A translation needs to read convincingly. There's no limit to what can go into it in terms of background research, feeling, or your own interests in form and history. But what should come out is something that reads as convincing English-language text. "

Jonathan Galassi

Own

Feeling

History

" I never thought I could write fiction. "

" I feel that there is not an endlessly expandable universe of fiction readers. "

" I think that a really good agent should be able to get the right publisher, which the agent has already figured out, get as much money as she can from that publisher, and make a deal, rather than have the amount of money determine the sale. That's what the best agents do. "

" John Updike's first published book was a collection of poems. "

" I can write anywhere that's quiet. I have a study in my apartment, but I often work in the kitchen of a house that we rent in the country. "

" I've always loved the poetry in 'Pale Fire.' I think it's wonderful. "

" I was nearly 40 when I published my first book. I was a slow starter - or rather, I was slow to gather my work together, though I had published translations, mainly of the Italian poet Montale, by then. "

" When you're in the throes of writing, I find, the lessons you've casually imparted to others are not in the forefront of your mind. Which may be good or bad. Probably both. "

" Poetry is not mainstream, but then neither is serious fiction, really. But I don't think there's a lot to worry about in this particular 'problem'. Why does art have to be mainstream to be significant? "

" The FSG story starts to lose its fairy-tale aura when filthy lucre invades the sacred enclosure, as it did ubiquitously in the every-man-for-himself Reagan era. "

" A publisher - and I write as one - does far more than print and sell a book. It selects, nurtures, positions and promotes the writer's work. "

Jonathan Galassi

Work

Far

" I wanted to be involved with literature. I certainly wasn't going to be able to write for a living, and I didn't have enough confidence in my talent to think that I should be just doing that. Publishing seemed like fun to me - to be involved with writers. And it did turn out to be. "

" Poems are endlessly renewable resources. Whatever you bring to them, at whatever stage of life, gets mirrored back, refracted, reread in new ways. "

" The only thing you can really say in a poem is what you really, really deeply believe. "

" Writing is inherently scary. "

" Editing is more by-the-hip. You look at a text and ask yourself how it can be improved. "

" I think that the continuity of what I do as an editor with what I did when I started out 40 years ago is very direct. The delivery system is changing and will continue to, but the actual interaction between publisher and author is exactly the same. "

" The Futurists believed in the machine, in making a great big fuss, in being young. For a brief moment, they were arguably the most influential aesthetic provocateurs in the world. "

" Elizabeth Bishop in particular had a big impact on me personally as well as artistically. Her insistence on clarity is something I rate very highly. "

" I deal with the authors I work with, agents, and other departments of the company, talking about both the books that I'm working on and everyone else's. Then there's dealing with foreign publishers: foreigners visit all the time. People want to bounce things off the publisher, and a lot of it is encouragement. "

" That's one thing about fiction: you can make the world be the way you think it should be. "

" A lot of great authors are published before their time. That's not wrong; it's just the way it works. "

" I've always used poetry to explain myself to myself. These things just sat in my psyche and then came out. "

" I think publishers need to be the ones that publish the books and control that process: finding writers, helping them with their work, finding readers. I think writers need that. "

" There are courses you can take to learn the mechanics of the business, like the Radcliffe course, but I don't think they teach you how to edit. "

" If you've worked in a company for a long time, there's a mythology that you know by heart, you don't need to look it up to evoke. It's there in your blood, as it were. "

" I think poetry was always where I went to deal with my deepest feelings. "

" I love poetry; it's my primary literary interest, and I suppose the kind of reading you do when you are reading poems - close reading - can carry over into how you read other things. "

" There's been a fragmentation of how the market functions, but I believe printed books are here to stay. People like the tactile experience, the smell of them; there's a great romance to them. "

Jonathan Galassi

Believe

People