Fiction. As with Michael Heller's memoirs and essays, TWO NOVELLAS: MARBLE SNOWS & THE STUDY continues his project of poetry by other means. These works, written some twenty years apart and drawing on such diverse influences as Akutagawa's short fictions, Joyce's Portrait and Valery's Monsieur Teste, embody Heller's exploration of language's dramatic relationship to character, fate and incident. Using radically different narrative techniques, the two novellas are united by a persistent vision, both anguished and comic, of a consciousness ransomed to words and yet, in mysterious ways, seemingly redeemed by them. "In the subtle resources of this articulate poet's testament, one voice again speaks for all"--Robert Creeley.

Author Hometown: NEW YORK, NY USA



About the author: Michael Heller is a poet, essayist and critic. Among his many books are BECKMANN VARIATIONS AND OTHER POEMS, TWO NOVELLAS: MARBLE SNOWS & THE STUDY, ESCHATON, EARTH AND CAVE, EXIGENT FUTURES, WORDFLOW: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, and Speaking the Estranged (essays on George Oppen). He wrote the libretto for the opera Benjamin, based on the life of Walter Benjamin. His awards include the NEH Poet/Scholar grant, the Di Castagnola Prize and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. He was born in 1937 in New York City where he now lives.