Poems in the Rough

A collection of Valéry’s prose poems

Paul Valéry began writing poems in various forms of prose and free verse as early as 1892, with Pure Dramas, and continued to do so throughout his life, even during his so-called period of silence, when he had given up writing formal verse. This volume of Valéry’s prose poems includes some of his finest strokes of imagination (Broken Stories), some of his wittiest observations (Mixtures and Poems in the Rough), and even some of his greatest poems (Parables and The Angel), revealing that he was a master not only of traditional verse forms but of the modern prose poem.

The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, the first collected edition of the writer in English, features new translations, the original French on facing pages for poetic works, and editorial notes.