Daryl Hine, a Canadian poet who has travelled widely, frequently records in his verse the quality of this travelling and the characteristics of the places he has visited. None of these places has he described more precisely and more poignantly than Paris, where he lived for several years as a young man. Arrondissements is the most complete of his comments on the French capital. At once a dream-promenade, an erotic tale, and a meditation on beauty's many forms, this brilliant suite of poems evokes a great city, quartier by quartier, and once again demonstrates the mastery of the poet who devised it.
