There is no artist more celebrated than Michelangelo. Yet the magnificence of his achievements as a visual artist often overshadow his devotion to poetry. Michelangelo used poetry to express what was too personal to display in sculpture or painting. John Frederick Nims has brought the entire body of Michelangelo's verse, from the artist's ardent twenties to his anguished and turbulent eighties, to life in English in this unprecedented collection. The result is a tantalizing glimpse into a most fascinating mind.

"Wonderful. . . . Nims gives us Michelangelo whole: the polymorphous love sonneteer, the political allegorist, and the solitary singer of madrigals."—Kirkus Reviews

"A splendid, fresh and eloquent translation. . . . Nims, an eminent poet and among the best translators of our time, conveys the full meaning and message of Michelangelo's love sonnets and religious poems in fluently rhymed, metrical forms."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"The best so far. . . . Nims is best at capturing the sound and sense of Michelangelo's poetic vocabulary."—Choice

"Surely the most compelling translations of Michelangelo currently available in English."—Ronald L. Martinez, Washington Times

San Juan de la Cruz, the great sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, is regarded by many as Spain's finest poet. Passionate, ecstatic, and spiritual, his poems are a blend of exquisite lyricism and profound mystical thought. In The Poems of St. John of the Cross John Frederick Nims presents his superlative translation of the complete poems, re-creating the religious fervor of St. John's art.

This dual-language edition makes available the original Spanish from the Codex of Sanlúcon de Barrameda with facing English translations. The work concludes with two essays—a critique of the poetry and a short piece on the Spanish text that appears alongside the translation—as well as brief notes on the individual poems.

Revised and enlarged, the second edition of Sappho to Valéry includes both the originals and translations of ninety-eight poems from nine different languages. Nims offers new and lively interpretations of a number of poems that have been translated and others available in no other English translation.

A former editor of Poetry, John Frederick Nims has published several volumes of his own poetry, poetry in translation, and essays on the form.

Selected Poems represents the best of John Frederick Nims's widely aclaimed work over the past thirty years. Selections are from Five Young American Poets, Third Series (1944), The Iron Pastoral (1947), A Fountain in Kentucky (1950), Knowledge of the Evening (1960), and Of Flesh and Bone (1967) and emcompasses the full range of one of contemporary America's foremost poets.