Stéphane Mallarmé

The Poems in Verse is Peter Manson s translation of the Poésies of Stéphane Mallarmé. Long overshadowed by Mallarmé's theoretical writings and by his legendary visual poem Un coup de Dés jamais n'abolira le Hasard, the Poésies are lyrics of a uniquely prescient and generative modernity. Grounded in a scrupulous sounding of the complex ambiguities of the original poems, Manson s English translations draw on the resources of the most innovative poetries of our own time these may be the first translations really to trust the English language to bear the full weight of Mallarméan complexity. With The Poems in Verse, Mallarmé's voice is at last brought back, with all its incisive strangeness, into the conversation it started a hundred and fifty years ago, called contemporary poetry.

Stéphane Mallarmé was born in Paris in 1842. A poet and critic, Mallarmé was also famous for hosting salons, gathering together poets, artists and intellectuals in his home. Among his guests were W.B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Valéry, Stefan George, Paul Verlaine, and many others. For most of his life, he worked as an English teacher, working at schools in Tournon, Besançon and Avignon before settling in Paris in 1871. Among his publications are Poésies, Divagations and a French translation of the poems of Edgar Allan Poe from 1888. His groundbreaking visual poem, "Un coup de Dés jamais n'abolira le Hasard" ("A throw of the Dice never will abolish Chance"), was published in the journal Cosmopolis in 1897, and in book form in 1914. Mallarmé died in Valvins in 1898.

Peter Manson lives in Glasgow, Scotland. His books include BETWEEN CUP AND LIP (Miami University Press, 2008), For the Good of Liars and Adjunct: an Undigest (both from Barque Press), and Poems of Frank Rupture. More information at www.petermanson.wordpress.com.