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 Labé and Maurice Scève 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, René Char, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Paul Éluard, Louise Labé, Stéphane Mallarmé, 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.

Since its inception in 1936, the New Directions in Prose and Poetry anthology series has been at the very core of the ND list. Of special interest in this the thirty-eighth number is a variety of visual and graphic materials that strives to extend the concept of the written word. David Antin’s “real estate,” a lengthy and highly entertaining narrative, is reproduced from the author’s own transcription of his improvised “talk poem.” Poet and critic Dick Higgins contributes two concrete poems. And from the late Russian man of letters, Aleksei Remizov (1877-1957) come eight remarkable drawings, introduced by the exiled Estonian poet and critic Aleksis Rannit. Also included are: Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Second Populist Manifesto: Adieu a CharIot”; James Purdy’s bizarre “Anonymous/Anomalous Letters of Passion”; “The Face at the Bottom of the World,” a poem sequence by Betsy Adams; “Klaus von Stauffenberg Reads His Palm While Shooting Niagara,” from Paul West’s fictionalized account of one of Hitler’s leading generals; Peter Kurinsky’s “The Investigation,” a tale of a young man’s unearthing of family skeletons; a newly translated story, “Blues for a Black Cat,” by the late French author Boris Vian (1920-59); “The Flies,” an evocation of a writer’s idyl gone awry, by the Faroese author William Heinesen; “Six Prose Poems” by the young Mexican-American poet Jimmy Santiago Baca; “Buried Alive,” a cryptic narrative of political repression by the Spanish writer Ramón Hernández.

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.

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 Labé and Maurice Scève 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, René Char, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Paul Éluard, Louise Labé, Stéphane Mallarmé, 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.

Since its inception in 1936, the New Directions in Prose and Poetry anthology series has been at the very core of the ND list. Of special interest in this the thirty-eighth number is a variety of visual and graphic materials that strives to extend the concept of the written word. David Antin’s “real estate,” a lengthy and highly entertaining narrative, is reproduced from the author’s own transcription of his improvised “talk poem.” Poet and critic Dick Higgins contributes two concrete poems. And from the late Russian man of letters, Aleksei Remizov (1877-1957) come eight remarkable drawings, introduced by the exiled Estonian poet and critic Aleksis Rannit. Also included are: Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Second Populist Manifesto: Adieu a CharIot”; James Purdy’s bizarre “Anonymous/Anomalous Letters of Passion”; “The Face at the Bottom of the World,” a poem sequence by Betsy Adams; “Klaus von Stauffenberg Reads His Palm While Shooting Niagara,” from Paul West’s fictionalized account of one of Hitler’s leading generals; Peter Kurinsky’s “The Investigation,” a tale of a young man’s unearthing of family skeletons; a newly translated story, “Blues for a Black Cat,” by the late French author Boris Vian (1920-59); “The Flies,” an evocation of a writer’s idyl gone awry, by the Faroese author William Heinesen; “Six Prose Poems” by the young Mexican-American poet Jimmy Santiago Baca; “Buried Alive,” a cryptic narrative of political repression by the Spanish writer Ramón Hernández.

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.