Great Regulars: Karl Kirchwey is a professor and director

of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College. He's decided to attempt something unimaginable: translate Paul Verlaine's Poèmes saturniens into English while preserving the poems' original verse and rhyme schemes. Anyone who has tried to do such a thing knows how hard and unrewarding it can be.

This is Verlaine's first book, published when he was 22. It had two lives, the first when it first appeared, and again 30 years later, when French culture rediscovered Verlaine.

from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Translations: Mallarmé by Auster, Rimbaud by Ashbery, Verlaine by Kirchwey

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