This Anthology of Modern French Poetry is the companion volume of The Appreciation of Modern French Poetry. It follows on from the general introduction to poetry and the select commentaries by providing a well-balanced, fully annotated anthology. It is hoped that the two works will be used in close conjunction, the comments of the one (on rhythm, verse-form, imagery, structure, etc.) helping towards a live and appreciative reading of the texts of the other, the details of the individual commentaries reflecting on and enriching the suggestions contained within the notes, and vice versa. Together, they offer the student the means of gaining a close, inquiring and genuine relationship with the work of the poets concerned, as well as with the major developments of over a hundred years of French poetry.

Our selection covers fourteen of the most influential or symptomatic poets of the period 1850 – 1950: Hugo, Nerval, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Cros, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Laforgue, Valéry, Apollinaire, Supervielle, Eluard, Michaux and Desnos. The choice from each is intended to show something of the variety as well as the underlying unity of his work, different tones as well as the uniqueness of the poet's voice. We have sought a balance: of long and short poems (Le Bateau ivre and O saisons, ô châteaux…), poems with distinctively different verse-forms (Possession and Hiéroglyphe), strictly governed metres and free verse (La Tzigane and 1909), parisyllabic and imparisyllabic lines (Recueillement and L Invitation au voyage), brief ‘weightless’ lines and more extensive cumbersome ones (Chanson d'automne and Sonnet boiteux), epic and lyrical tones (Booz endormi and Demain, dés l'aube…) and so on: the contrasts and comparisons that one could make are almost unlimited.