PAUL VERLAINE - BEFORE WISDOM: THE EARLY POEMS
Paul Verlaine
Before Wisdom: The Early Poems
Translated from French by
KEITH WALDROP and K. A. HAYS
$20.00
120 pages
May 25, 2023
ISBN 978-1-954218-12-3
Distributed by Asterism (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
BIOS
An icon of fin de siècle French poetry, PAUL VERLAINE (1844-1896) was a major influence on the Symbolist and Decadent movements, and a troubled and often violent alcoholic. A book of love poems for his wife Mathilde was followed by a tempestuous relationship with Arthur Rimbaud that ended with his attempted murder of the younger poet, after which Verlaine spent two years in prison. He wrote as musically of sex and sensuality as of religious innocence and spirituality. His poems were set to music by composers such as Debussy and Fauré, and his lyricism and lifestyle inspired many generations of poets from Boris Pasternak to Patti Smith. He died in poverty in Paris at the age of 51.
KEITH WALDROP is the author of more than twenty poetry collections, including Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2009, and an inspired translator of French poetry from Charles Baudelaire to Edmond Jabes, Claude Royet-Journoud, and Anne-Marie Albiach, honored by the French government as a Chevalier des arts et des lettres. He has also published the acclaimed memoir Light While There is Light (Sun & Moon) and a collection of his collages, Several Gravities (Siglio). For more than fifty years, with Rosmarie Waldrop, he ran the legendary small press Burning Deck. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and is a professor emeritus of Brown University.
K. A. HAYS is the author of four collections of poetry: Anthropocene Lullaby (2022), Windthrow (2017), Early Creatures, Native Gods (2012), and Dear Apocalypse (2009). Hays’ poetry has been included in volumes of Best American Poetry and many magazines. In 2005, Hays earned an M.F.A. in the Literary Arts at Brown University, where she worked with Keith Waldrop. Hays currently teaches in the Creative Writing program at Bucknell University.
Paul Verlaine
Before Wisdom: The Early Poems
Translated from French by
KEITH WALDROP and K. A. HAYS
A selection from the legendary French poet Paul Verlaine’s first four books translated with irreverence and musicality by Keith Waldrop and K.A. Hays.
Before he became an icon of fin de siècle French poetry and a major influence on the Symbolist and Decadent movements, before he met Arthur Rimbaud and published his best-known collection (Wisdom), and before he was renowned as a troubled and often violent alcoholic, Paul Verlaine wrote four books of poetry: Saturnine Poems (1866), Wild Parties (1869), The Good Song (1870), and Wordless Romances (1874). This volume presents selections from those books, presenting Verlaine’s lesser-known early work, in translations that Cole Swensen has called “a real tour de force” and Michael Palmer calls “remarkable versions.”
“Waldrop’s subtle sonic modulations and ease of diction bring Verlaine—in all of his beauty and absurdity—to life in English. Many exquisite, non-dramatic passages haunt me (‘Mild ringing of rain / On pavement, on tile.’) and the sudden deflations crack me up (‘Does my name still make your heartbeat go? / Is my soul permanent in your dreams? — No.’). The contrast between Waldrop and Verlaine's personalities only makes the poems more vivid.” — Ben Lerner
“Waldrop and Hays have opened the shutters, pulled back the embroidered curtains, yanked the sheets off the furniture, and lifted the curse from the “curséd poet.” This is sunlit syncopated American rhythm for the famous French sonorities, as though Verlaine’s contemporary, Gustave Fauré, was being played by Duke Ellington.” — Eliot Weinberger
“How to approach the work of a poet whose first known poem is titled ‘Death,’ and his last, ‘Dead’? Waldrop and Hays pull it off with aplomb ... splendid, often daring choices that maintain Verlaine’s famous soundscapes through a brilliant balance of the play of atmosphere and emotion so distinctive in his poems ... The introduction is a masterpiece in itself, distinguished by the well-known Waldropian wit and framing the whole both temperamentally and historically. All together, a real tour de force.” — Cole Swensen
“Verlaine’s subtly innovative prosodic skill and his singularly French lyric sensibility present significant, even daunting, challenges to would-be translators. Here melos—the music—is at once the ultimate and the most fugitive poetic goal. These remarkable versions offer a much-welcome window into the range of his art: his erotic fixations, his chimeras, his alternating exaltation and despair.” — Michael Palmer
BIOS
An icon of fin de siècle French poetry, PAUL VERLAINE (1844-1896) was a major influence on the Symbolist and Decadent movements, and a troubled and often violent alcoholic. A book of love poems for his wife Mathilde was followed by a tempestuous relationship with Arthur Rimbaud that ended with his attempted murder of the younger poet, after which Verlaine spent two years in prison. He wrote as musically of sex and sensuality as of religious innocence and spirituality. His poems were set to music by composers such as Debussy and Fauré, and his lyricism and lifestyle inspired many generations of poets from Boris Pasternak to Patti Smith. He died in poverty in Paris at the age of 51.
KEITH WALDROP is the author of more than twenty poetry collections, including Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2009, and an inspired translator of French poetry from Charles Baudelaire to Edmond Jabes, Claude Royet-Journoud, and Anne-Marie Albiach, honored by the French government as a Chevalier des arts et des lettres. He has also published the acclaimed memoir Light While There is Light (Sun & Moon) and a collection of his collages, Several Gravities (Siglio). For more than fifty years, with Rosmarie Waldrop, he ran the legendary small press Burning Deck. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and is a professor emeritus of Brown University.
K. A. HAYS is the author of four collections of poetry: Anthropocene Lullaby (2022), Windthrow (2017), Early Creatures, Native Gods (2012), and Dear Apocalypse (2009). Hays’ poetry has been included in volumes of Best American Poetry and many magazines. In 2005, Hays earned an M.F.A. in the Literary Arts at Brown University, where she worked with Keith Waldrop. Hays currently teaches in the Creative Writing program at Bucknell University.
PRESS
120 pages
May 25, 2023
ISBN 978-1-954218-12-3
Distributed by Small Press Distribution (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
