Allen Mandelbaum

From the Vast and Versal Lexicon: Selected Poems by Allen Mandelbaum

Poetry. Edited by Henry Weinfield. Allen Mandelbaum (1926-2011), best known for his award-winning translations of Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divina Commedia, Homer's Odyssey, and Ovid's Metamorphoses, was also a formidable poet. This volume, handsomely designed by Barry Moser, Mandelbaum's longtime illustrator, was produced for Moser's Pennyroyal Press by the Bridgeport National Bookbindery (Agawam, Massachusetts) in 300 numbered copies. It features an original pencil portrait of the author by Moser on the frontispiece. The book brings together the finest of the poems contained in the four collections published during the poet's lifetime as well as poems published here for the first time. In the landscape of twentieth-century American poetry, Mandelbaum's voice is a unique, original, and compelling one.