In this bilingual anthology, editor and translator Simpson selects those masterpieces of French poetry that formed the taste of generations of readers throughout the world. Here are the moderns of 1848, the Symbolist poets of the turn of the century, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists who flourished in the 1930's. Also included are biographies of the poets and descriptions of main literary movements. --Story Line Press.

A beautifully jacketed hardcover collection of verse by French-speaking poets from cultures across the globe, spanning the ages from medieval to modern. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POETS. From the troubadours of the Middle Ages to the titans of modern poetry, from Rabelais and Ronsard to Aimé Césaire and Yves Bonnefoy, French Poetry offers English-speaking readers a one-volume introduction to a rich and varied tradition. Here are today’s rising stars mingling with the great writers of past centuries: La Fontaine, François Villon, Christine de Pizan, Marguerite de Navarre, Louise Labé, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and many more. Here, too, are representatives of the modern francophone world, encompassing Lebanese, Tunisian, Senegalese, and Belgian poets, including such notable writers as Léopold Senghor, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, and Hédi Kaddour. Finally, this anthology showcases a wide range of the English language’s finest translators—including such renowned poet-translators as Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, John Ashbery, and Derek Mahon—in a dazzling tribute to the splendors of French poetry.

During the 20th Century, France was home to many of the world’s greatest poets. This collection highlights some of the very best verse that came out of a country and century defined by war and liberation. Let Paul Auster guide you through some of the best poetry that 20th century France has to offer. “Indispensable . . . a book that everyone interested in modern poetry should have close to hand, a source of renewable delights and discoveries, a book that will long claim our attention . . . To my knowledge, no current anthology is as full and as deftly edited.”—Peter Brooks, The New York Times Book Review “One of the freshest and most exciting books of poetry to appear in a long while . . . Paul Auster has provided the best possible point of entry into this century's most influential body of poetry.”—Geoffrey O'Brien, The Village Voice

'Poetry will no longer keep in time with action; it will be ahead of it.' Arthur Rimbaud The active and colourful lives of the poets of nineteenth-century France are reflected in the diversity and vibrancy of their works. At once sacred and profane, passionate and satirical, these remarkable and innovative poems explore the complexities of human emotion and ponder the great questions of religion and art. They form as rich a body of work as any one age and language has ever produced. This unique anthology includes generous selections from the six nineteenth-century French poets most often read in the English-speaking world today: Lamartine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé. Modern translations are printed opposite the original French verse, and the edition contains over a thousand lines of poetry never previously translated into English.

This work demonstrates that twentieth-century Nicaraguan poetry can not be comprehended in its fullest dimension without an understanding of the literary traditions of France and the United States. Ever since Ruben Dario established Hispanic America's literary independence from Spain in the nineteenth century with his modernista revolution, poets in Nicaragua actively have engaged in a dialogue with the works of French and North American authors as a means of assimilating and transforming them and thereby inventing a profoundly Nicaraguan literary identity. This process has resulted in what might be called a double genealogy in Nicaraguan poetry: certain poets attracted to the alchemical properties of the poetic word and a transcendent, mythic, meta-reality seem to have descended from French literary forebears; others, interested in an expansive, poeticized version of history and verisimilitude, have roots that might be traced to North American soil. This division is a provisional, experimental means of grouping Nicaraguan poets based not on the traditional compartmentalization of literary generations, but on the "family resemblances" of poetic affinities. Presented here is an effective analysis of the "familial" nature of the Nicaraguan poets achieving their own literary independence by taking into account socio-political and historical considerations, common literary themes, as well as the intertextual relations that form the basis of international literary dialogues. This rigorous, but flexible, approach to modern Nicaraguan poetry enables the reader to accompany the poets on their journeys toward God and the end of the world; into a timeless Nicaraguan landscape invaded by U.S. Marines; beyond a contemporary urban portrait of Los Angeles; through the horrifying European battlefields of World War I and the trenches of Nicaragua's revolution against the Somoza dictatorship. The English-speaking reader probably will be unfamiliar with most of the seven preeminent Nicarguan poets whose works are the subject of this book, but it is hoped that the reader will realize that the poetry of Nicaraguans Alfonso Cortes, Salomon de la Selva, Jose Coronel Urtecho, Pablo Antonio Cuadra, Joaquin Pasos, Carlos Martinez Rivas, and Ernesto Cardenal is worthy of serious study. Furthermore, the poems of these authors take on a richer meaning when they are studied as co-presences in relation to certain texts by Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, and Supervielle, or - in an "American" context - by poets such as Whitman, Pound, Eliot, and Masters. A relatively small country with a rich, diverse tradition in poetry, Nicaragua has maintained high literary standards generation after generation and has produced poets of a world-class stature whose time has come for greater recognition.

Works by Villon, Ronsard, Voltaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, many more. Full French texts with literal English translations on facing pages. Biographical, critical information on each poet. Introduction. 31 black-and-white illustrations.

This anthology is the companion volume to The Appreciation of Modern French Poetry, the aim of which was to give detailed preliminary help with the problems of poetic appreciation. The fourteen poets represented here provide a varied and exciting introduction to what is probably the richest century of French poetry, from 1850 to 1950. Hugo, the colossus of the nineteenth century, whose work gives new resonance and vitality to imaginative vision, opens the anthology, and Michaux, the most individual and 'modern' of twentieth-century poets in that he bridges the gap between poetry and contemporary science, closes it. Almost all the major poets of the period are included: Nerval, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Laforgue from the second half of the nineteenth century; Valéry, Apollinaire, Supervielle and Eluard in the twentieth. The lesser known Cros and Desnos, fresh and spontaneous poets with an immediate appeal, invite a new look at the lyric traditions of french verse and offer an attractive new avenue for study. The choice of poems, dictated above all by their individual poetic value, reflects also the trends of recent criticism and the tastes of present-day readers. The texts are all accompanied by full notes, which not only explain local difficulties of vocabulary, syntax and expression, but lead the reader directly into the heart of the richness of theme, style and interpretation. These will prove of value not only to the student who is grappling with the basics of french verse, or is anxious to give depth to his familiarity, but to the general reader seeking to rekindle his enjoyment of French poetry. In addition, there are introductions to each poet summarizing the essence of his art, useful suggestions for further reading, and groups of dicussion topics to stimulate comparative insights and a wider responsiveness.