20th-century French poems - Stephen Romer

Stephen Romer's anthology is a wonderful introduction to the extraordinary diversity of French poetry in the last century. These hundred and fifty or so poems spanning the whole of the 20th century have been chosen with two distinct qualities in mind: firstly the poetic quality of the translation, secondly faithfulness to the original. In most cases, the versions have been made by practising poets and many have been newly commissioned. The emphasis is on poems rather than poets and the colection has an introduction which signals and describes the movements and contours of the literary map. Contributors include: Mark Ford/Raymond Roussel, Max Jacob/John Ashbery, St John Perse/T.S. Eliot, Valery Larbaud/Alan Jenkins, Samuel Beckett, Philippe Jaccottet/Derek Mahon, Paul Valry/Paul Muldoon and Andre Velter/Marilyn Hacker.