John Godwin

Selections from Catullus John Godwin

This is the first intermediate-student edition of a selection of poems by Catullus. Poems 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 17, 34, 40, 62, 64 (lines 124-264), 70, 76, 85, 88, 89, 91 and 107 are included as Latin texts with an accompanying commentaries and vocabulary. Focusing on a deliberately concise extract of Catullus' oeuvre, this edition is designed to be manageable for students reading the texts for the first time while also perfectly encapsulating the interest of his broader body of work and inspiring further study of it. A detailed introduction explains points of historical and stylistic interest.

The poetry of Catullus is some of the most accessible and vivid literature ever composed. Yeats described his poems as ones which 'young men, tossing on their beds/ rhymed out in love's despair/ to flatter beauty's ignorant ear' and this selection reveals a writer baring his feelings on the page in lines of unforgettable force. He is rude and crude when he wants to be, but also elegant and wistful, sometimes in the same poem. Above all, he recreates what it was to be a young poet in the heady world of the Roman republic.