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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Jonathan Galassi

Learn

You

Think

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" After college, I went to England and studied for a couple years. "

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

" 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. "

" The thing that happened with the music business, there are no stores anymore where you can buy music. It's all an online business now, and that's, you know - the bookstore culture is a very vibrant part of the American experience that we're very reluctant to see go away. "

Jonathan Galassi

Business

Experience

" 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. "

" Everything is different - except for publishing itself: getting hold of an amazing author, working to make his or her book the best and best-looking it can be, telling the world. "

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

" I think poetry should be read very much like prose, except that the line breaks should be acknowledged somehow. "

Jonathan Galassi

Think

Breaks

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

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

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

" One thing I have noticed is that when you're a younger editor, you're more intense about it. As you go along, you relax a little. More and more, I feel that the book is the author's. You give the author your thoughts, and it's up to him or her to decide what to do. "

" 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. "

" Claiming your life for yourself feels like a huge deal until you do it. "

Jonathan Galassi

Deal

Life

" 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. "

" Be patient, work hard and consistently, have faith in your writing, and don't be afraid to listen to constructive criticism. "

" My biggest concern about the market is the force that acts to drive down price, because I think that's destructive to authors as well as publishers. Our biggest battle is to underline the value of intellectual property. "

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

" 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 never thought I could write fiction. "

" As the publisher of FSG and the custodian of its legacy, I have an interested insider's view. "