Hothouses: Poems, 1889

Maurice Maeterlinck. Princeton University Press, $41 (120pp) ISBN 978-0-691-08837-2

Long overdue for reconsideration is Hothouses: Poems 1889, the book of poems published in French by Belgian lawyer Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), who later went on the win a Nobel Prize. The facing-page translations by Richard Howard are the first complete set in more than 100 years, accompanied by seven Georges Minne woodcuts that show ""those faraway nights/ so long dead to memory that their/ gradually focused return/ withers the green soul of hopes to come.""

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