The Poetry of Petrarch

"A supple English version of the complete songbook in blank verse, which is at once faithful and elegant . . . Young's decision to render Petrarch's lyrics in blank verse is amply justified by the results, which preserve the dignity of the original while maintaining a musical, 'poetic' effect. Perhaps the greatest compliment to be paid Young's translation is that although it never strays from the literal sense of the original, written more than 600 years ago, the language always sounds fresh and contemporary. The book is beautifully produced, with the bare essential of annotation provided in marginal glosses rather than in the usual clutter of footnotes . . . Petrarch's greatest contribution to literature was the first enduring collection of love poetry in a modern European language, an imaginative and subtle anatomy of the spiritual dimensions of love, which this fine new translation brings to glowing life for contemporary readers."—Jamie James, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Young's translation is fresh: the sonnets are clear and unstilted. He sticks to regular, agreeable iambics, without trying to match in English the ready rhymes available to Petrarch in the original Italian . . . The courtly, self-negating passion of [these poems] comes across almost alarmingly well in Young's rendition . . . Petrarch wrote, revised, and added to the sequence over forty-seven years, and perhaps that slow, rich development is what comes across best in Young's translation."—Peter Walpole, Virginia Quarterly Review

"David Young's version of Petrarch will refresh our images of the West's crucial lyric poet. We are given a Petrarch in our own vernacular, with echoes of Wyatt, Shakespeare, and many who come after."—Harold Bloom

"To read love poetry—to speak of the language of love—is to read Petrarch, who is largely responsible for inventing what W. B. Yeats called 'the old high way of love.' David Young has made the old way
fs26new again: his translation is limpid, uncluttered, rhythmically alive, and, above all, readable. Lovers of poetry will discover here the language they have spoken all their lives."—James Longenbach

"True love—or rather, the truest—is always obsessive and unrequited. No one has better dramatized how it scorches the heart and fires the imagination than Petrarch did, centuries ago. He dipped his pen in tears and wrote the poems that have shaped our sense of love—its extremes of longing and loss—ever since. Now in David Young's elegant new versions, his songs are as soaring and searing as ever. Indeed, not only is this a vibrant translation for our day but, their immense range slowly savored, these poems will sound anew the depths of each reader's own heart."—J. D. McClatchy

"Young's new version of Petrarch makes this great poet seem closer to us than before, both in language and as a living presence. His marginal comments and introduction help to convey a coherent sense of Petrarch the man, his life, and the myth he made of it."—W. S. Merwin