The Books of Catullus (Carcanet Classics) - Softcover

`One might say the best translation is to have dozens of translations, and this is true for Catullus. He exists in every age because the work is timeless. With grace, elegance, skill, daring, and lyric beauty we find the work all over again in Smith's magnificent new translation.' - Peter Gizzi

The Books of Catullus is the first full English translation to take the Roman poet at his word. Simon Smith's versions are scholarly yet eccentric, mapping theme and register to contemporary equivalents (such as poem 16, which echoes Frank O'Hara). He divides Catullus's complete verses into three `books', the form in which it is thought the poems were originally received. `Smith gets the all-important rhythm of Catullus, whose meters, like all else about this poet, are deceptively complex', writes Vincent Katz. `He achieves a delicious frisson again and again by fusing the classical and the contemporary. The reader is repeatedly pleasured by unexpected felicities.' (Peter Hughes)