Catullus: Selected Poems

A vivid and musical rendering of the poetry of Catullus, whose passionate verses have captivated readers for centuries

In the fourteenth century, a manuscript surfaced in Verona that had been lost for more than a thousand years: the poems of Catullus (c. 84-c. 54 BCE), considered by many to be one of the greatest poets who ever lived. These poems, with their beauty, wit, tenderness, and heartbreak, are still as alive and moving today as they were two thousand years ago.

They are dense, subtle, witty, ardent, fearless, deeply uncensored, nasty (sometimes), petty (sometimes), and always beautiful. It’s especially his love poems that have earned readers’ admiration over the centuries; the joy and the savage self-inflicted torments that he underwent in his ＂miserable, disastrous love affair＂ have been shaped into poems that for honesty and emotional power have few parallels in world literature.

Stephen Mitchell, who is known for bringing ancient texts to vibrant new life, has now translated Catullus’s poems for a new generation of readers. These are the first translations of Catullus to reimagine his rhythms in English and thus to let contemporary readers hear the formal beauty of his verse as well as its content, which Robert Lowell calls ＂much more raw and direct than anything in English.＂

Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84-c. 54 BCE) was one of the most influential lyric poets of ancient Rome. Stephen Mitchell’s many books include the best-selling Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, The Book of Job, The Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, The Gospel According the Jesus, The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Beowulf.