SOURCE: An introduction to Verlaine: Selected Poems, translated by Joanna Richardson, Penguin Books, 1974, pp. 15-28.

In the following excerpt, Richardson provides a critical overview of Verlaine's verse, reputation, and contribution to literature.

Bishop on Verlaine's Development as a Poet

Verlaine's art is, despite its grace and wit, predicated upon consummate control of formal and expressive means. Work and art were synonymous for him to the end of his life. Madrigals, odes, elegies, sonnets, he half-realized, however, were soon to become things of the past. He himself toys, half-mockingly, with assonance, while deeming rhyme to be central to poetry and holding free, blank verse to be inadequately equipped to survive on poetic grounds. . . . [However,] he recognizes the principles of liberty and new possibility at stake, and senses the legitimacy of new claims. Indeed, it is important to stress, too, in conclusion, the significance of an almost entirely overlooked element...