Crowned "Prince of Poets" in his later years, Paul Verlaine stands out among the iconoclastic founders of French modernist verse. This diglot anthology offers the most comprehensive selection of Verlaine's poetry available in English translation. Verlaine's famous works are presented here alongside poems never previously translated into English, including neglected political works and prison pieces only recently brought to light, which reveal social, homoerotic, and even pornographic inspirations. The poems are organized not by collections and date of publication but by themes and time of composition. This innovation, along with Valazza's extensive supporting materials, will help the curious student or scholar explore the master poet's work in the context of his troubled life: from the beginning of his literary career among the Parnassians to his affair with Rimbaud and the end of his marriage, his time in prison, and his bohemian lifestyle up to his death in 1896. Verlaine, the poet of ambiguity, has always been a challenge to translate. Rosenberg expertly crafts language that privileges the musicality of Verlaine's verse while respecting each poem's meaning and pace. Featuring 192 poems in French with English translations, this collection will appeal to scholars and poetry enthusiasts alike.

French poet Paul Verlaine was a major representative of the symbolist movement during the latter half of the 19th century. Norman Shapiro's translations seek to display Verlaine's ability to transform into verse the essence of everyday life and make evident the reasons for his renown in France and throughout the Western world. This selection provides the reader with a cross-section of Verlaine's repertoire. Shapiro has included a number of the poet's early works, showing him at his most capricious and lyrical; many poems from his middle period, which reflect his on-again, off-again conversion to Catholicism after his tumultuous relationship with Arthur Rimbaud; and poems from his late period, when he fell prey to poverty, dissipation, and disease. These later poems, rarely anthologized, and for the most part little known, mark an important shift in Verlaine's style and exhibit the biting wit and deep sincerity that characterize this entire collection. Biographical introductions and notes help explain the circumstances that gave rise to Verlaine's work. By spanning the poet's entire life work, Shapiro presents to scholars, students, and general readers of poetry the full range of Verlaine's achievement.

"Poems Under Saturn" is the first complete English translation of the collection that announced Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) as a poet of promise and originality, one who would come to be regarded as one of the greatest of nineteenth-century writers. This new translation, by respected contemporary poet Karl Kirchwey, faithfully renders the collection's heady mix of classical learning and earthy sensuality in poems whose rhythm and rhyme represent one of the supreme accomplishments of French verse. Restoring frequently anthologized poems to the context in which they originally appeared, "Poems Under Saturn" testifies to the blazing talents for which Verlaine is celebrated.

The poems display precocious virtuosity, mingling the attractions of the flesh with the longings of the spirit. Greek and Hindu myth give way to intimate erotic meditations and wickedly satirical society portraits, mythological landscapes alternate with gritty narratives of mid-nineteenth century Paris, visions of happiness yield to nightmarish glimpses of deep alienation, and real and imaginary characters--including Achilles, Valmiki, Charlemagne, and Spain's baleful King Philip II--all figure as the subject matter of a supremely ambitious young poet.

"Poems Under Saturn" presents the extraordinary devotion and intense musicality of an artist for whom poetry remained the one true passion.