Authors: Jonathan Galassi
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Biographical, #Satire
Muse: A Novel (25 page)
He could almost see the new wave rising to the south, climbing higher, gray on gray; he could practically hear it, roaring in his ear till it became another kind of silence. What would it bring? Dissolution. Purification. Renewal. Everything would be swept clean, and reconstituted: virgin again. Out with the old; in with the aftermath. It was time to start over.
Paul loved this view, its primal constancy even in the worst weather. He loved the repetitive heaving of the ocean. And he would love it too after the storm, maybe more than before.
He opened Ida’s
Complete Poems
and for the thousandth time read the poems of
Mnemosyne.
GOLDENROD
Mnemosyne remembers as she sits
and stares across
the water every day
hard as she tries
she finds there’s no reprise
far too much
evades her failing eyes
but always she sees hair and forehead
lips meeting lips
and skin on ageless skin
she summons its faint mineral scent
and knows what she remembers isn’t sin
and though she can’t have back
each gone embrace
each breath each hopeless kiss
she knows she does own this
the last time
that she watched you turn
to trace your footsteps
through the goldenrod
she remembers
that she heard you call
miss you darling
see you in the fall
Mnemosyne remembers that was all
A Concise Bibliography
Virgin Again
(Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1942).
Ember and Icicle
(Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1945; London: Faber & Faber, 1946).
Aloofness and Frivolity
(Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1947; London: Faber & Faber, 1948).
In Your Face
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1950).
Bringing Up the Rear
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1954; London: Faber & Faber, 1955) [translated by Renée Schorr as
Mes Derrières
(Paris: De Noël, 1956)].
Striptease
(London: Faber & Faber, 1957 [includes
In Your Face
]; New York: Impetus Editions, 1958). National Book Award for Poetry, 1958; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1959.
The Face-lift Wars
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1963; London: Chatto & Windus, 1963).
Nights in Lausanne
(Cadenabbia: Drusilla Mongiardino, 1964; incorporated into
Arte Povera,
1982).
Exquisite Emptiness
(Geneva: Éditions de L’Herne, 1965; incorporated into
Half a Heart,
1967).
Half a Heart
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1967; London:
Chatto & Windus, 1969) [translated by Elsa Morante as
Cuore dimezzato
(Genoa: Edizioni del Melograno, 1973)]. National Book Award, 1967.
Remove from the Right
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1970; London: Faber & Faber, 1971) [translated by Ingeborg Bachmann as
Aus dem Rechten
(Hamburg: Festiverlag, 1974)].
Barricade
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1972; London: Faber & Faber, 1973) [translated by Claude Pélieu-Washburn and Mary Beach as
Les fortifications intérieures
(Geneva: Editions de la Trémoille, 1980)].
The Brownouts
(London: Faber & Faber, 1974; New York: Impetus Editions, 1975).
Translucent Traumas: Selected Poems
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1975). National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 1976; Pulitzer Prize, 1976.
Doggy Days
(St. Louis: Ferguson, Seidel & Williams, 1979; Hamburg: Festiverlag, 1982).
Arte Povera
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1982; London: Faber & Faber, 1982) [translated by Harry Mathews under the same title (Paris: Mercure de France, 1986)]. National Book Award, 1982.
Marginal Discharge
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1987).
Age Before Beauty
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1991; London: Faber & Faber, 1991).
The Anticlimaxes
(New York: Impetus Editions, 1995; London: Faber & Faber, 1996). National Book Award, 1996.
Aria di Giudecca
(New York: Impetus Editions, 2000; London: Faber & Faber, 2000) [translated by Marialuisa Spaziani under the same title (Venice: Marsilio, 2002)].
Mnemosyne
(New York: Purcell & Stern, 2011; London: Faber & Faber, 2011; and 37 editions worldwide). National Book Award, 2011; Pulitzer Prize, 2012.
The Complete Poems
(New York: Impetus Editions/Purcell & Stern, 2014; London: Faber & Faber, 2014).
Underwater Lightning: Uncollected Poems and Drafts,
edited by Paul Dukach (New York and San Francisco: Purcell & Stern/Medusa, 2020; London: Faber & Faber/Medusa, 2020).
Prescriptions and Projections: Prose Writings,
edited by Eliot Weinberger (New York: Impetus Editions, 2021).
SEE ALSO
Elliott Blossom.
Brownouts and Brilliants: The Instances of Ida Perkins
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016).
Paul Dukach.
Ida Perkins: Life and Art and Life
(New York and San Francisco: Purcell & Stern/Medusa, 2019).
Alan Glanville.
Mnemosyne Remembers: The Life of Ida Perkins
(New York: Impetus Editions, 2018).
Hebe M. Horowitz.
The Ida Era
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019).
Rosalind Horowitz.
My Night with Arnold Outerbridge (and Other Tales from the Good Old Days)
(New York: Boatwright Books, 2020).
The author gratefully salutes the following for help and encouragement of many sorts: Hans-Jürgen Balmes; Katherine Chen; Eric Chinski, Andrew Mandel, and my colleagues at Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Bill Clegg; Bob Gottlieb; Eliza Griswold; Margaret Halton; Michael Heyward; Leila Javitch; Jennifer Kurdyla; Laurence Laluyaux; Maureen McLane; David Miller; Darryl Pinckney; Justin Richardson; Stephen Rubin; Lorin Stein; and Roger Straus.
Special thanks to Tenoch Esparza, for everything; to my wise agent, Melanie Jackson; and, above all, to Robin Desser, for her prodigious insight, enthusiasm, and, well, impetus.
Jonathan Galassi is a lifelong veteran of the publishing world and the author of three collections of poetry, as well as translations of the Italian poets Eugenio Montale and Giacomo Leopardi. A former Guggenheim Fellow and poetry editor of
The Paris Review,
he also writes for
The New York Review of Books
and other publications. He lives in New York City.
To view the reading group guide for
Muse
, please visit:
http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/239494/muse/
