Before Wisdom

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 siecle 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.'