"Marie Ponsot is marvelously attuned to the visual and to the audible. She is no less precisely a geographer of the interior life, above all the experience of being a woman." - Amy Clampitt

"Ponsot attends to elegant forms without losing sight of what they are there to express." - The New Yorker

"A Marie Ponsot poem is a little like a jeweled bracelet, carefully carved, with small, firm stones embedded in it." - The New York Times


Universally admired for his fables and contes (tales), Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) epitomized France's Great Century with his elegant style, emotional profundity, and ready wit. Among the many translators who have attempted to render the fun and beauty of his writing in English, this selection by the award-winning poet Marie Ponsot is arguably the finest ever achieved, superbly conveying the wide-ranging and ever-shifting sensibilities of this rich and complex writer. Akin to Richard Wilbur's triumphant rendering of Moliere into English, this long-neglected version, unavailable since it first appeared in 1966, is a rediscovered treasure of French literature for English-language readers. Author Benjamin Ivry, biographer of Ravel, Rimbaud, and Poulenc, presents this new edition and adds an Introduction about La Fontaine and his times.