Title: Poems of Paris

Author: Emily Fragos

Type: Poetry

Page Count/Review Word Count: 258

Rating: 3.5/5

I liked this collection, in part because it took me back to my visit to Paris earlier this year. I actually visited the graves of a few the poets who are included here, and it also introduced me to some French poets that I’d never come across, as well as reminding me of some English ones who I hadn’t read for a while.

To be honest, my only real complaint about this one would be that translating poems from French into English doesn’t always work as well as you might hope for. That’s especially true when the translator has tried to retain the rhyming scheme, because I don’t see how they can stay true to the poem while also finding words that maintain the same meaning but happen to rhyme.

Overall though, it was a pretty decent collection, as all of these Everyman Collections is. It also contains a nice cross section of poetry, with Verlaine and Bukowski appearing within a couple of pages of one another. It also has plenty of English language poets, which I guess is fair because otherwise it might as well have been Poems of France.

If you’re looking for a nice little pocket-sized collection that you can carry around with you and dip in and out of, this is the book for you. I’m glad that I picked it up, especially because I found it cheap in a charity shop.

Learn more about Poems of Paris.