A delightful account of the seasons in a North Fork cottage and its garden, in a domestic idyll of hardy plants and neighbors, love and loss, and acceptance of the life we've made
The deliciously book-length story of "The Vineyard" is set in and around the little house in Oyster Ponds where the poet spends the summer months. In freeflowing lines and pages that turn with the calendar, the poem unspools impressions that seem confided rather than written, as Galassi observes the "pretend peace'' of this quiet village house and garden, his oasis in the great swirl of dailiness. Themes and imagery recur, swerve, and transform as he watches the vineyard next door come alive, thrive, and die away, only to return the next year, different but the same, in our time of plague, climate threat, and a culture that too often seeks to tear down what is most beautiful and lasting.
But this book is not a complaint or a raging against the dying of the light: it is an honest record of dailiness, of gratitude, of finding one's center. From the wisteria vines that drop suckers on the lawn to the history of farms and businesses around the village, it becomes an ample container for Jonathan's life: we're having a chat with him about all he sees and dreams, about tending the plants and cooking and gossiping, about loving men and growing older, about his mother and Vita Sackville-West and bike-riding and having daughters and regrets. The narrative swells and touches us in its surprising turns; sometimes whole poems swim up and hold a page in the midst of its narrative, reminding us how writing practice anchors the quotidian.
This intimate, unhurried, and unpretentious life poem will stand as the central work of Jonathan Galassi's career. JONATHAN GALASSI is the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is the author of three poetry collections, including Left-handed: Poems, and has published his translations of the Italian poets Giacomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale.
