Filled with devotion and lust, sensuality and eroticism, fevers and overtures, these poems showcase some of the most passionate verses in the French language. From the classic sixteenth-century love sonnets of Louise Labe and Maurice Sceve to the piercing lyricism of the Romantics and the dreamlike compositions of the Surrealists, French Love Poems is the perfect, seductive gift for anyone who makes your heart flutter. This collection includes poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Baudelaire, Claude Cahun, Rene Char, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Paul Eluard, Louise Labe, Stephane Mallarme, Anna de Noailles, Joyce Mansour, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, and many others; as well as translations by Mary Ann Caws, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Denise Levertov, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Frederick Seidel, Richard Sieburth, and William Carlos Williams.

Catullus was undoubtedly one of the most intimate, witty, vivid, and tender poets of antiquity. Perhaps his greatest gift was his ability to truthfully reveal the fleeting instants of his bare psyche: moments of erotic passion, of scorn and jealousy, of heartfelt devotion, of consuming love. The cycle of poems to his love, “Lesbia,� have entranced poets and translators across the centuries, enriching many different traditions in English-language poetry. This anthology of Catullus’s love poems showcases translations from many New Directions authors, including James Laughlin, Bernadette Mayer, Muriel Spark, and Louis and Celia Zukofsky, as well as beloved timeless translations, like those of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe, and inimitable modern versions from the likes of Dorothy Parker and Horace Gregory. Also included are several newly commissioned translations from contemporary poets and writers.

Across the ages, cats have provided their adopted humans with companionship, affection, mystery and innumerable metaphors; cats cast a mirror on their beholders; cats endlessly captivate and hypnotise, frustrate and delight. And to poets, in particular, these enigmatic creatures are the most delightful and beguiling of muses (Charles Baudelaire: "the sole source of amusement in one's lodgings") as they go about purring, prowling, hunting, playing, meowing and napping, often oblivious to their so-called masters (Jorge Luis Borges: "you live in other time, lord of your realm-a world as closed and separate as a dream"). Cat Poems offers a litter of odes to our beloved felines by Charles Baudelaire, Stevie Smith, Christopher Smart, Denise Levertov, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rainer Maria Rilke, Muriel Spark, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound and many others.