Anabasis / Selected Poems

Saint-John Perse, born in Guadeloupe and steeped in both Caribbean and French literary traditions, received the Nobel Prize in 1960 for the soaring sweep of his epic poetry. Anabasis, his most celebrated work, was notably translated into English by T.S. Eliot, whose admiration for Perse's visionary lyricism helped bring the poem to an international audience.

Shaped by a life that moved between French diplomacy and political exile, Perse composed verse of exceptional geographic and historical range, evoking the march of civilizations across deserts and seas. Eliot's translation of Anabasis in the 1930s introduced anglophone readers to a poet whose grand, incantatory style stood apart from the ironic modes dominant in modernist poetry.