Poems

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments My first thanks are to Nancy Freeman Regalado, professor emerita of French at New York University, lifelong Villon scholar, and author of an enduringly influential body of work on Villon. Nancy introduced me to Villon sixteen years ago, and in the years since has been a boundlessly generous teacher, adviser, mentor, and friend. In the course of preparing this book, I have had the tremendous good fortune to benefit from her insight and her expert advice on matters small and large. The emphasis in this translation on trying to do justice to Villon’s jokes and puns owes a good deal to E. B. Vitz and her understanding of medieval texts as performance pieces. Richard Sieburth, in the Comparative Literature department at New York University, introduced me to the craft of translation and first suggested translating Villon. Thanks too to María Rosa Menocal, at Yale, whose inspiring example nudged me in this general direction. This book would not exist without the good offices of Mike Levine at Northwestern University Press, and would not have turned out half as well without the skill and care of the team there: managing editor Anne Gendler, art director Marianne Jankowski, and copy editor Alma MacDougall . Thanks to them, the process of seeing this book to press was more collaborative and collegial than I ever imagined it could be. Many thanks to Robert Walsh, whose encouragement at a particular moment in the process was absolutely decisive, and who generously lent the compass of his fine sensibility and good judgment. Daniel Slager provided invaluable guidance at many points, along with the benefit of his professional acumen and an unfailing faith in the project. Jill Schoolman gave important strategic advice, and fellow translators Erdağ Göknar and Liesl Schillinger weighed in on points of craft. Simon Brennan, John Banta, Walter Owen, David Gendelman, and Austin Merrill, colleagues and longtime friends at Vanity Fair, read long selections and contributed a range of perceptive opinions. At an early stage, I also had the privilege of a lively correspondence with Stephen Rodefer, discussing his 1977 translation , or transformation, Villon. As a poet rather than a translator per se, x acknowledgments his business with Villon was different from mine, but his boldness and inventiveness were an important lesson for me. Not least, I’d like to acknowledge Roger and Angela Georgi, because a parent’s enthusiasm is a great pleasure at any age; my sisters, Mara Georgi and Karen Georgi, great teachers and subtle readers; and my uncle, Michael Puglisi, who aided and abetted by sharing a quiet house in Vermont. A lot of writing also took place at La Muse, a writer’s retreat perched on the side of a chestnut-wooded valley north of Carcassonne: my thanks to John Fanning and Kerry Eielson for their hospitality. Most involved of all, over the long haul, was Natalie Bell, shrewd reader, tireless ally, and lovely companion. Thank you. ...