Fe-Lines

Norman R. Shapiro, translator of French poetry and theater, is Distinguished Professor of Literary Translation at Wesleyan University. As Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la RÉpublique FranÇaise and member of the Academy of American Poets, he has published numerous award-winning collections, including The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine. Olga Pastuchiv's art enlivens a number of volumes, among them her children's picture book Minas and the Fish.

"Norman Shapiro, a flute, harp, and violoncello of cat song, tells the crafty musical tale of the cat from medieval France until today. Shapiro, at his artistic apogee, created an English masterpiece in his Selected Lyrics of ThÉophile Gautier. But now with his Fe-Lines, he has invented a new genre, as T. S. Eliot did with Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The world is his pen. Who knows where the next Everest awaits him?"--Willis Barnstone, author of Moonbook and Sunbook "What makes a cat poem appealing to the reader? One of the salient features that I took from Fe-Lines is the constant desire to finish a poem with a 'menschliche Weisheit' (human insight of wisdom) that activates the reader's imagination and keeps the reader inside the movement of the poem. A major contribution to the field of letters and world literature."--Rainer Schulte, author of The Geography of Translation and Interpretation: Traveling between Languages “With beautiful illustrations and poems of every age and form, this book will please everyone (except dog lovers).”--World Literature Today