"The first volume of a long-awaited two-volume collection of translations by America's foremost living poet, surveys John Ashbery's lifelong involvement with French poetry. Beginning in 1955, Ashbery spent almost a decade in France, during which time he worked as an art critic in Paris and was close to the poet Pierre Martory. His translations of Martory's poems, collected in The Landscapist, were a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation in 2008 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry; a selection of them appears here. Other poets included are Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, Paul Éluard, and France's greatest living poet, Yves Bonnefoy. The development of modern French poetry emerges through Ashbery's chronology, as does the depth of French influences on the poets of the New York School. Presenting 171 poems by twenty-five poets, this bilingual volume also features a selection of Ashbery's masterly translation of Rimbaud's Illuminations, published to acclaim in 2011. Ashbery's choices and translations of French poetry in this book offer unique insights into the wide and varied scope of French cultural influences on his work over the decades of his productive and resonant career"--