French love poems are about the kind of love that puzzle, delight and afflict us throughout our lives. On the way there's the first yes from lips we love (Varlaine), a sky full of stars reflected fatally in Cleopatra's eyes (Heredia), lying awake waiting for your lover (Valery), and the defeted toys of dead children (Gautier).

Paul Valery (1871-1945) was a poet and essayist, and along with Verlaine and Mallarme is regarded as one of the most important Symbolist writers, and an influence on poets from Eliot to Ashbery. He had a quiet life by many standards, but in one respect it was exemplary, even legendary; he made an early reputation in little magazines, decided to stop writing verse when still only 20, kept his silence for 20 years, then began again; and his first book of verse, published when he was 45, was his masterpiece La Jeune Parque.'A poem should not mean, but be,' said Archibald MacLeish. La Jeune Parque ('the goddess of Fate as a young woman') certainly exists: she's beautiful and makes great gestures. And as for what she means, there's a substantial amount of argument about that, so La Jeune Parque is a poem by either definition. It's a classic, by general agreement, written to the full 17th-century recipe for alexandrine couplets, and it's modern, with every word pulling its weight in more than one direction. Alistair Elliot's translation with notes is aimed at making this rewarding but difficult long poem accessible enough for bafflement to turn into admiration. He attempts to clarify its small puzzles and also trace the overall narrative line of Paul Valery's poem: it does have a story (what should a young woman do?) and does struggle towards a resolution. He also provides an introduction which deals with the interesting circumstances of the poem's four-year composition (1913-17), which resulted in Valery's instantly becoming a famous poet at the age of 45, after having written no poetry for 20 years.

It is quite bizarre that a culture so besotted with food and all things relating to the stomach and the senses should have left but one cookery book. The curious, therefore, must resort to other sources of inspiration for information about the Romans at table. Not least among these sources is the poetry of men such as Horace, Martial, Juvenal, Catullus, Ovid, Livy and Seneca, here translated with grace and aplomb by the Latin scholar and poet Alistair Elliot. This work contains the Latin and English as parallels on facing pages. Alistair Elliot is a classical teacher and scholar, as well as a recognized poet.

" 'What I intend to do is wrong, but the rage of my heart is stronger than my reason - that is the cause of all men's foulest crimes.' Medea is the archetypal wronged woman driven to despair. When uncontrollable anger is unleashed, the obsessed mind's capacity for revenge knows no bounds. Introduction by Nicholas Dromgoole"

Erotic poems praise male and female lovers, and the joys of physical love.