Selected Poems Paperback – December 1, 2025

This exciting collection moves the legendary lesbian and salonnière beyond anecdote and caricature, giving us, finally, a substantive selection of her poetry in a beautiful, bilingual edition. This is the book we’ve been waiting for, offering a steady look at Barney as an artist who took herself and her art more seriously than we have been led to believe.—Melissa BradshawThis selection of Natalie Clifford Barney’s verse poems, translated from the French by Samantha Pious, gives us welcome access to the creative output of a woman whose reputation as a doyenne of the Parisian salon scene and open lover of other women has often eclipsed her literary work. Pious’s deft translations bring to life poems Barney published from the turn of the century to the cusp of the Roaring Twenties. Formal yet sensuous, serious yet wry, they are beautifully fluid yet as “wayward” in their direction as the “woman of 1730” whom Barney evokes in one of her early sonnets. As Barney’s writings come alive in English, so too does the complex woman behind them, a woman who dared to devote her life to women and to art.—A’Dora PhillipsTranslation is an extraordinary act of stewardship, and great translations strike a rare balance between archaeological dig and séance. In this collection, Pious reaches beyond mere research and brings us a Natalie Clifford Barney who is knowing, vivacious, and achingly romantic—whose artistry and humanity leap off the page in abundance. For English-speaking lovers of modernist poetry, this volume is buried treasure, polished to a gleam.— Patricia Wallinga Read more