This edition of Nelligan's poems, with a critical introduction by the editor and translator, is the first complete English translation of Nelligan's poetry authorized by the Emile Nelligan Foundation. With this book the editor hopes to persuade the reader that Emile Nelligan, "the most brilliant and original of the poets of the Ecole Littéraire of Montreal," was also the finest Canadian poet of the nineteenth century. In this view he is seconded by the American critic Edmund Wilson, who wrote: "The accepted idea [in Canada]. . . is that the poetry of English Canada is excellent and better than their fiction, and it irritates them to be told that the best Canadian poet was French."

Though now considered the father of French Canadian literature, mile Nelligan's poetry has never before been published in English. The impact of this great writer's work and his distinction as being the first Canadian writer to be influenced by Baudelaire and Rimbaud make this collection a vital contribution to the international understanding of Quebecois literary history.

Nelligan’s finest poems. This collection of 46 poems, translated from French, has been selected for both poetic and psychological interest. Émile Nelligan, Canada’s first truly modern poet, burst upon the scene as a prodigy creating brilliant lyrical poetry in late 19th-century Montréal for three years before suffering, at age 19, a breakdown that left him in a mental asylum for the rest of his life. Nelligan went on to achieve mythic status in Québec — no other poet in all Canada has been the subject of so many biographies, films, novels, plays, and critical appraisals. This volume includes Nelligan’s key poems, accompanied by robust commentary covering such topics as the women in Nelligan’s life, the nature of his breakdown, and the several controversies surrounding his life and work. Includes picture gallery. “A fascinating story of this meteoric figure. The poems show that Nelligan was a musician of words who merits recognition beyond Québec’s borders.” Translator and commentator Ian Allaby is a Toronto-based writer, poet and former editor of the Spadina Literary Review.

A legend of 19th century French Canadian poetry, mile Nelligan was only 16 when he fell under the influence of Baudelaire and Rimbaud and began writing taut, confidently surrealistic poems, shot through self-lacerating melancholy. Translating Nelligan's "essential" poems, along with a sharp introduction contextualizing his legacy as one of the "first poets to write openly about suicide, neurosis, and psychological breakdown," Marc di Saverio has given us a rivetingly fresh version of Nelligan for a new generation.

A legend of 19th century French Canadian poetry, Émile Nelligan was only 16 when he fell under the influence of Baudelaire and Rimbaud and began writing taut, confidently surrealistic poems, shot through self-lacerating melancholy. Three years later, when a mental collapse led to his life-long institutionalization in 1899, he had already produced an impressive body of work. Translating Nelligan's "essential" poems, along with a sharp introduction contextualizing his legacy as one of the "first poets to write openly about suicide, neurosis, and psychological breakdown," Marc di Saverio has given us a rivetingly fresh version of Nelligan for a new generation.

From the renowned classicist and MacArthur Prize winner: a brilliant new collection that explores myth and memory, beauty and loss, all the while playing with--and pushing--the limits of language and form. Anne Carson continuously dazzles us with her inventiveness and the way her work changes our perspectives. With Float, she surpasses her own bar. In individual chapbooks that can be read in any order, she conjures a mix of voices, time periods, and structures to explore what makes people, memories, and stories "maddeningly attractive" when observed in liminal space. One can begin with Carson puzzling through Proust on a frozen Icelandic plain; in the art-saturated enclaves of downtown New York City; atop Mount Olympus as Zeus ponders his afterlife. There is a three-woman chorus of Gertrude Steins embodying an essay about "falling." And an investigation of monogamy and marriage as Carson anticipates the perfect egg her husband is cooking for breakfast. Exquisite, heartbreaking, disarmingly funny, Float illuminates the uncanny magic that comes with letting go of boundaries. It is Carson's most intellectually electrifying and emotionally engaging book to date. From the Hardcover edition.