Jonathan Galassi



Jonathan Galassi (born 1949), is an American poet, translator, and publishing executive.

Life
Galassi was born in Seattle, Washington,, but he grew up in Plympton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy where he became interested in poetry, writing and literature, and from Harvard College in 1971. He was a Marshall Scholar at Christ's College, University of Cambridge.. He realized while attending Christ’s College that he wanted a career in book publishing.

He began his publishing career at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, and moved to Random House in New York. In 1985, after being fired from Random House, He joined Farrar, Straus & Giroux as executive editor. Two years later, he was named editor-in-chief, and is now the firm's President and Publisher.

He has translated and published the poetic works of the Italian poets Giacomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale. His activities include having been poetry editor for The Paris Review for ten years, and being an honorary chairman of the Academy of American Poets. He has published poems in literary journals and magazines including Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, and The Nation and on the Poetry Foundation website.

He was married to Susan Grace, with whom he had two daughters. The couple divorced in late 2011. 

Recognition
His honors as a poet include a 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Poetry

 * Morning Run: Poems. Paris Review Editions/British American Publishers, 1988.
 * North Street: Poems. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.
 * Left-Handed: Poems. New York: Knopf, 2012.

Translated

 * The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays of Eugenio Montale. New York: Ecco Press, 1982.
 * Otherwise: Last and First Poems of Eugenio Montale. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.
 * Eugeneio Montale, Collected poems, 1920-1954. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1998.
 * Paolo Guarnieri, A Boy Named Giotto (pictures by Bimba Landmann). New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999.
 * Selected Poems of Eugenio Montale (translated by Jonathan Galassi, Charles Wright, and David Young; edited with an introduction by David Young). Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College Press, 2004.
 * Giacomo Leopardi, Canti (translated and annotated by Jonathan Galassi). New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010.