Since its publication in 1913, Alcools has acquired classic status as a major landmark not only in French poetry but in the wider contexts of modern European literature.An indispensable text for an serious study of modernism, it is richly rewarding in its own right: it draw on traditions of folk-song and literary Symbolism, mingles lyrics of disarming simplicity with poems which are so boldly experimental that they can still challenge the modern reader and it looks forward to the discoveries of Surrealism and much else in subsequent writing.Above all, however, it records...