Sonnets of Love and Death

Jean de Sponde, Jean Sponde. Northwestern University Press, $15.95 (83pp) ISBN 978-0-8101-1840-9

A true Renaissance man, Basque-born Jean de Sponde (1557-1595) was a jurist, alchemist and poet, among other vocations and avocations. Prolific poet, translator and Bennington College faculty member David R. Slavitt has taken Sponde's old French Sonnets of Love & Death and put them in modern English, while attempting to preserve Ssponde's rhyme scheme and immediacy. The results are mixed, but this bilingual edition allows easy comparisons. (July)

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