Poikilopaidia

The title, POIKILOPAIDIA, is Greek for "a multicolored education." In fact, the 198 poems collected, spanning 60 years, cover a wide variety of subjects such as one encounters during a long life rich in experience, from the ordinary day-to-day, to the extraordinary, including erotic, mystical, intellectual, artistic, political, philosophical and religious. The poems are composed in a variety of styles and metres, from sonnets to free verse; and in a range of moods, from grief to hilarity. Although deeply personal, the collection includes 18 poems (cannily selected and translated by the author) from Sappho, Lucretius, Dante, Cecco, Cavalcanti, Petrarch, Campanella, Leopardi, Pascoli, Cardarelli, Hugo, Baudelaire, Mallarme', Stefan George, Hesse, and Rilke, Several of the poems and translations are prefaced or followed by the author's explanatory notes and comments.

POIKILOPAIDIA incorporates the 22 poems previously published (in Twilight with Halfmoon Rising: Selected Poems, by Peter Gimpel (1991).