Fidelity Poems

Just before her death in 2007 at the age of eighty-four, Grace Paley completed this wise and poignant book of poems. Full of memories of friends and family and incisive observations of life in both her beloved hometown, New York City, and rural Vermont, the poems are sober and playful, experimenting with form while remaining eminently readable. They explore the beginnings and ends of relationships, the ties that bind siblings, the workings of dreams, the surreal strangeness of the aging bodyall imbued with her unique perspective and voice. Mournful and nostalgic, but also ruefully funny and full of love,Fidelityis Grace Paley's passionate and haunting elegy for the life she was leaving behind.

Born in the Bronx in 1922, Grace Paley was a renowned writer and activist. Her Collected Stories was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She died in Vermont on August 22, 2007.

“In this book, Grace Paley’s celebrated gifts as a story-teller have entered a lyric fire and emerged unscathed. These are wonderful, unswerving narratives of ordeal and grace. Here are poems about friendship, about ageing and the approach of death. And in every one of them, her familiar wit shines. These poems will travel far: they will be on nightstands, in backpacks, on email lists, in conversation and memory and soliloquy for a long time to come.” —Eavan Boland “All over the world, in languages you never heard of, she is read as a master storyteller in the great tradition: People love life more because of her writing.” —Vivian Gornick