From the publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: a first novel, at once hilarious and tender, about the decades-long rivalry between two publishing lions, and the iconic, alluring writer who has obsessed them both. Paul Dukach is heir apparent at Purcell & Stern, one of the last independent publishing houses in New York, whose shabby offices on Union Square belie the treasures on its list. Working with his boss, the flamboyant Homer Stern, Paul learns the ins and outs of the book trade—how to work an agent over lunch; how to swim with the literary sharks at the Frankfurt Book Fair; and, most important, how to nurse the fragile egos of the dazzling, volatile authors he adores. But Paul’s deepest admiration has always been reserved for one writer: poet Ida Perkins, whose audacious verse and notorious private life have shaped America’s contemporary literary landscape, and whose longtime publisher—also her cousin and erstwhile lover—happens to be Homer’s biggest rival. And when Paul at last has the chance to meet Ida at her Venetian palazzo, she entrusts him with her greatest secret—one that will change all of their lives forever. Studded with juicy details only a quintessential insider could know, written with both satiric verve and openhearted nostalgia, Muse is a brilliant, haunting book about the beguiling interplay between life and art, and the eternal romance of literature.

Product Description: Born in 1915 in Cambridge, England, Rupert John Cornford was a committed communist who fought in defence of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War and was killed in uncertain circumstances at Lopera, near Córdoba in 1936. Though his life was tragically brief, he documented his experiences of the conflict through poetry, letters to family and his lover, and political and critical prose which spoke out against the fascist regime and its ideologies...read more

Canti

Product Description: An emotionally riveting collection that tells a powerful story of passion, loss, and transformation. Left-handed unfolds in the manner of an intense, searching novella. At its center is a one-way dialogue with an elusive character who beguiles and torments but also inspires the unnamed narrator, who at midlife is telling the tale...read more

Product Description: A strong, idiomatic translation of Italy's greatest modern poet.Eugenio Montale is universally recognized as having brought the great Italian lyric tradition that began with Dante into the twentieth century with unrivaled power and brilliance...read more

Product Description: A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 Giacomo Leopardi is Italy's greatest modern poet, the first European writer to portray and examine the self in a way that feels familiar to us today. A great classical scholar and patriot, he explored metaphysical loneliness in entirely original ways...read more

Product Description: A cycle of unrhymed sonnets dealing with public and private crises, marriage, middle age, and fatherhood, Notebook 1967–68 is considered by many readers to be one of Robert Lowell’s most innovative and searching works. Yet these freeform sonnets (which Lowell reworked in later volumes) are not included in their original form in his Collected Poems...read more

Product Description: Solitude, despair, fear of death and what alleviates it all: friendships that come of shared interests and the consolations of art.

A collection of poetry by the author of the critically acclaimed Morning RunR addresses many of the concerns of middle age, including marriage, fatherhood, maturity, experience, and the passage of time. Reprint. (view table of contents)

Displays the author's treatment of love in the context of modern history and spiritual faith, and includes extensive notes (view table of contents)

Poems address many of the concerns of middle age, including marriage, fatherhood, and the passage of time. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Magrelli writes with a capacious grasp of the enormous, still-to-be discovered potentialities of the great treasure house of Italian. His poetry is a soliloquy written with a pencil and small notebook during the latest and most silent hours of the night...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

A tale of a pre-Renaissance master painter describes his early years as a shepherd boy, his apprenticeship to the great artist Cimabue, who teaches him to paint frescos, and shows how eventually he surpasses his master.

In his first book of poems, the poet addresses love and friendship, the natural world, and memory in an entirely original interweaving of subject and form

Gathers poems, essays, and letters by the English poet who was killed at the age of twenty-one, fighting as a member of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War

The Nobel Prize-winning poet, Eugenio Montale, discusses the state of contemporary poetry, the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi, the culture of Italy, and other artistic, literary, and social topics

The Nobel Prize-winning poet, Eugenio Montale, discusses the state of contemporary poetry, the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi, the culture of Italy, and other artistic, literary, and social topics