Poems of Paris

A beautiful hardcover Pocket Poets anthology of poems from across the ages inspired by the City of Light

Perhaps no other European city has so captured the poetic imagination as has Paris. Poems of Paris covers a wide range of time, from the Renaissance to the present, and includes not only the pantheon of classic French poets, from Ronsard to Baudelaire to Mallarmé, but also tributes by visitors to the city and famous expatriates from all over the world, including Pablo Neruda, Samuel Beckett, Rainer Maria Rilke, Vladimir Nabokov, Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski, and many more. All the famous sights of Paris are touched on here, from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower, as are such classic Parisian themes as food, drink, and love, and famous events from the Revolution to the Resistance.

EMILY FRAGOS is an award-winning poet and editor of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets anthologies The Great Cat, The Dance, Music's Spell, Art and Artists, Poems of Gratitude, and Letters by Emily Dickinson. She lives in New York City.

Contents

THE CITY OF LIGHT
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE  Trip to Paris
BLAISE CENDRARS   From The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne of France
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE  Twilight: Daybreak
PAUL VERLAINE  The Noise of the Cabarets
JULES LAFORGUE  Spring Evening on the Boulevards
SARA TEASDALE   Paris in Spring
E.E. CUMMINGS   “Paris;this April sunset completely utters”
TRISTAN CORBIERE   Paris At Night
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI   Square d’Orleans
FRANCOIS COPPEE   Paris
PHILIPPE SOUPAULT   Horizon
CHARLES BUKOWSKI   Paris
HENRI COLE   Paris Is My Seroquel
RAYMOND QUENEAU   Cleanliness
GREGORY CORSO   Paris
HAS PARIS CHANGED?   Willis Barnstone
EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS   Paris Is Beyond Compare
 
THE SIGHTS
LANGSTON HUGHES   Montmartre
OSCAR WILDE   Le Jardin des Tuileries
JACQUES ROUBAUD   To the Eiffel Tower
GALWAY KINNELL   Les Invalides
JACQUES PREVERT   Place du Carrousel
FADY JOUDAH   Arc de Triomphe
OSIP MANDELSTAM   Notre Dame
RON PADGETT   Bastille Day
ELIZABETH BISHOP   Sleeping on the Ceiling
EZRA POUND   In a Station of the Metro
JEAN TARDIEU   The Seine in Paris
COUNTEE CULLEN   At the Etoile
 
THE STREETS
JACQUES ROUBAUD from Arrondissements
MARILYN HACKER   Rue des Ecouffes
CZESLAW MILOSZ   Bypassing Rue Descartes
HAROLD NORSE   beat hotel, 9 rue git-le-coeur
JEAN FOLLAIN   From Streets
MAX JACOB   La Rue Ravignan
LEON-PAUL FARGUE    At Saint-Germain
 
PARISIANS
FRANCOIS VILLON   Ballade of Forgiveness
PIERRE REVERDY   Street Circus
MAURICE ROLLINAT   The Mime
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA   Clochard
RITA DOVE   The Island Women of Paris
AIME CESAIRE   The Griffin
HEDI KADDOUR   The Bus Driver
TRISTAN TZARA  The great lament of my obscurity three
MARIE PONSOT   Rain All Night, Paris
VICENTE HUIDOBRO   Blind
GERARD de NERVAL  A Path in the Luxembourg
JACQUES ROUBAUD  Dream of February 11, 19--, Dream of August 17, 19-- 
 
THE CITY OF LOVE
ROBERT DESNOS   I Have Dreamed of You So Much
PIERRE de RONSARD   From Sonnets pour Helene (40)
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE   From Zone
MARY JO SALTER   Boulevard du Montparnasse
ANDRE BRETON  The Free Union
PAUL ELUARD   The Earth Is Blue Like an Orange
JACQUES PREVERT   Paris at Night, The Garden, Immense and Red
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE   Le Pont Mirabeau
PAUL VERLAINE   Il Bacio
JEAN GENET   From A Song of Love
JOYCE MANSOUR   I Want to Sleep with You
STEPHANE MALLARME   “O So Dear From Far Away, So Near and White”
PAUL ELUARD   Lady Love
EDWARD HIRSCH   Colette
GRACE CAVALIERI   Hotel Saint Germain
JAMES FENTON   In Paris With You
 
EXPATRIATES
CESAR VALLEJO   Black Stone On A White Stone
MARINA TSVETAEVA   In Paris
PABLO NERUDA   Goodbye to Paris
RICHARD WRIGHT  From Haiku, This Other World
GERTRUDE STEIN   From Hotel Francois 1er
ZELDA FITZGERALD   From Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald
ERNEST HEMINGWAY   Montparnasse
VLADIMIR NABOKOV   From Paris Poem
LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR   In Memoriam
RAINER MARIA RILKE   “You don’t know nights of love?”
JULIO CORTAZAR   Le Dome
SAMUEL BECKETT   Sanies II
STANLEY MOSS   From Mon Pere, Elegy for Paul Celan
NAZIM HIKMET   Before the Time Runs Out, My Rose
 
TOURISTS
MONA VAN DUYN   At Pere Lachaise
VICTORIA KENNEFICK   Paris Syndrome
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI   Plan Du Centre De Paris A Vol D’Oiseau
JAMES WRIGHT   A First Day in Paris
KENNETH KOCH   To the French Language
DAVID KIRBY   To a French Structuralist
BILLY COLLINS   January in Paris
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA   Vocabulary
CLARENCE MAJOR   No One Goes to Paris in August
 
FOOD & DRINK
HANNAH MORE   From Florio
BARBARA CROOKER   Les Boulangers
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY   From The Ballad of Bouillabaisse
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE   Be Drunk
PIERRE MARTORY   Wine
ANTONIN ARTAUD   Verlaine Drinks
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE   The Soul of the Wine
 
THE ARTS
FRANK O’HARA   Poulenc
JAMES A. EMANUEL   Bojangles and Jo
LANGSTON HUGHES   Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret
LUIS LAZARO TIJERINA   Chet Baker in Paris
JON STALLWORTHY   Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge
GABRIELA MISTRAL   Rodin’s Thinker
DELMORE SCHWARTZ   From Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon Along the Seine
ROBERT HAYDEN   Monet’s “Waterlilies”
ROSANNA WARREN   Renoir
JAMES MERRILL   For Proust
EMILY FRAGOS   Theatre de l’Odeon
MARK DOTY   Couture
DAVID LEHMAN   French Movie
 
HOMAGE TO THE POET
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE   From To Victor Hugo
YVES BONNEFOY   Mallarme’s Tomb
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI   Triste Corbiere
STEPHANE MALLARME   The Tomb of Charles Baudelaire
CESAR MORO   Andre Breton
GUY GOFFETTE   Max Jacob
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI   In Paris In A Loud Dark Winter
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE   A Ballad of Francois Villon
YVES BONNEFOY   Verlaine’s Tomb
RENE CHAR   You Did Well To Leave, Arthur Rimbaud!
BENJAMIN PERET   Portrait of Paul Eluard
GERALD STERN   Desnos
RON PADGETT   Little Elegy
GAEL TURNBULL   Homage to Jean Follain
TRISTAN TZARA   The Death of Guillaume Apollinaire
 
REVOLUTION
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH   From The Prelude, Book 9
VICTOR HUGO   From The Year of Horrors, “November 1870, On the Ramparts of   
          Paris, at Nightfall”
HEINRICH HEINE   Marie Antoinette
BENJAMIN PERET   Louis XVI Goes To The Guillotine
ARTHUR RIMBAUD   Parisian War Cry
 
WAR, OCCUPATION, RESISTANCE
BLAISE CENDRARS   In Paris
JULES SUPERVIELLE   Rain and the Tyrants
LOUIS ARAGON   Richard II Forty
PAUL ELUARD   Curfew
ROBERT DESNOS   Rue Saint-Martin Couplets
PIERRE REVERDY   From The Song of the Dead
PAUL ELUARD   Courage
PAUL ELUARD   Liberty
JEAN FOLLAIN   “There’s no more war”