Customer Reviews

Poems.

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Verlaine must be a big bad dog to translate. I'm going on faith here and assuming that the occassionally dippy rhyme scheme that pops up in some of the poems is a tragic result of the aforementioned difficulty. For the most part the work is lovely. (I mean what would you expect from possibly the greatest French poet ever?) Dark and troubled, you get a vauge sense of ominous hulking black shapes around you, with the occassional glorious bright spotof hope, the sensation of reading the work mirrors the nocturnal landscape in which many of the poems are set. It's sort of an interesting collection. It skips over several of Verlaine's better known works choosing, rather, to give sort of a life overview in 61 pages. The translator, along with going on and on about indeed how hard it is to translate Verlaine also talks a bit about his intentions in the selection. And, really, if you have some small knowledge of Verlaine's life, it does make the book more interesting. You can see the philosophical progression of Verlaine's life and follow the subtle sine waves of his unique despair. Claire de Lune, Grotesques, and Parables are some of my personal favs.