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 Valéry'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 City: NEW YORK, NY USA

Michael Heller is a poet, essayist and critic. Among his many books are THIS CONSTELLATION IS A NAME: COLLECTED POEMS 1965-2010, SPEAKING THE ESTRANGED: ESSAYS ON THE POETRY OF GEORGE OPPEN, BECKMANN VARIATIONS AND OTHER POEMS, TWO NOVELLAS: MARBLE SNOWS & THE STUDY, ESCHATON, EARTH AND CAVE, EXIGENT FUTURES, and WORDFLOW: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. 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.