Jonathan Galassi on Poetry Month and the Year Ahead

Throughout the month FSG publisher, poet, and translator Jonathan Galassi will be adding his thoughts on various aspects of the poetry world.

Poetry Month so soon? Here it is, catching me up in the midst again, as we always are. We’ve been producing a lot around here, and I think the array is both broad and deep. Our new books this spring include Carl Phillips’s Double Shadow, Yusef Komunyakaa’s The Chameleon Couch, the Selected Poems of Robert Pinsky, and Les Murray’s collection Taller When Prone, as well as Murray’s poem-rich memoir of overcoming depression, Killing the Black Dog. FSG is participating in Eric Fischl’s heroic America Now and Here project by publishing the fascinating collaborative poem Crossing State Lines: An American Renga, edited by Bob Holman and Carol Muske-Dukes. Charles Wright’s Bye-and-Bye: Selected Late Poems is out next week; Adam Zagajewski’s Unseen Hand, in Clare Cavanagh’s brilliant translation, will be out in June; and the big, fat FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry, edited by Ilan Stavans, is on the shelf next to new editions of Elizabeth Bishop’s Poems and Prose that we published for the centenary of her birth last February, along with Joelle Biele’s delicious, revelatory Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence.

A Wealth of Poetry on Scribd

I confess to being late to the party on Scribd.com. At first I thought it was a repository for journalists' primary sources (court documents, transcripts, etc.). Then a friend mentioned the site featured thousands of unpublished works of fiction, with several writers critiquing each other's work. It's both of these things, and, due to myriad other uses I have yet to discover, Scribd's blossomed into a very large community of readers.

So we're pleased to announce our partnership with them, starting with a selection of recent work by Les Murray, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Christian Wiman and others. We'll be adding more poetry throughout April, so please check back often.

-Ryan

The Icing On The Cake

Frankly, after all the awesomeness that has been put forth on this day (Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Adam Zagajewski, Les Murray, Cara Spitalewiz), I can't believe I'm sharing anything else.

But it's Wednesday, and it's raining in NYC, and there's so long until the weekend, which is why I have two poems for you, from John Ashbery, both recorded back in 1996 at FSG's 50th Anniversary party--here's Ashbery reading James Schuyler's '3-25-66' and his own 'Chapter 2, Book 35.' Enjoy!

Poems The Size Of Photographs

Continuing FSG Insiders Week, Cara Spitalewitz has written a great post about what it's like to work with Australian poet Les Murray (for more Les, check here for a link to Adam Zagajewski reading Murray's 'The International Poetry Festival Thing'):

"I’ve always hated my last name. It’s long and hard to pronounce and since starting at FSG, I’ve begun to suspect that I don’t enunciate it properly. Why else would I get so much mail addressed to Caris Pitalewitz? Why else would I get so many compliments on my interesting first name, which rhymes with Paris?

Imagine my surprise when I received a handwritten note from Les Murray, famed Australian poet, complimenting me on my 'splendid name.' The fact that the note was handwritten wasn’t the surprising part. Les doesn’t have access to e-mail. He may as well not have a phone either, since the time difference between New York and Australia is 14 hours. He does have a fax machine, but it only works on occasion.

I learned from the note that Les Murray’s paternal ancestors came from a farm in the Scottish Borders called Spital Tower, which used to be a leprosium run by monks. As a result, my last name has a 'warm resonance' for him.

At the bottom of the page is a black scribble, followed by a parenthetical: (excuse this blot!)

I’ve been here for seven months now, and the only decoration in my office is Les Murray’s note, scotch-taped next to my computer. I’ve excused the blot."

"The International Poetry Festival Thing"

The bad news: Adam Zagajewski wasn't able to record any new poems for us, because the recording studios we were working with in Boston were being difficult. Very, very difficult. And Adam Zagajewski was due to head back to Paris very soon, and the studio couldn't accomodate him and were very inflexible in their timing, and, so much the sadder for all, Adam had been planning to record some John Berryman for us in Boston. (Insert collective sigh of despair here.)

But trust me, I would never leave you with such a downer of a post on a beautiful Friday afternoon! I do have some really bangup recordings of Adam Zagajewski in 1996. Here he is reading another one of FSG's poets, Les Murray, who has a new book coming out next month, The Biplane Houses. This poem is fabulously titled 'The International Poetry Festival Thing.'