Women/men: Femmes/Hombres - Softcover

'...in Verlaine's clandestine collections of erotic verse, Mr Elliot succeeds marvellously. The French poet's exuberant wit, sensuality, and technical - or pyrotechnical - brilliance evoke the same virtues in the translator. The poems are obscene, blasphemous, joyful celebrations of carnal love, with man or woman; hymns to the body... These are astonishing, beautiful poems, astonishingly and beautifully rendered.'D M Thomas, Times Literary Supplement

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) wrote three secret collections of verse, of which "Femmes" and "Hombres" remained almost unobtainable even in France until the 1970s. These strangely unrespectable poems celebrate the pleasures of sex, with women and men respectively, in loving detail - reversing the old view of Verlaine as a limp impressionist. Alistair Elliot's metrical translations brilliantly echo the vigour, good humour and skill of the originals, which accompany them in this bilingual edition.