Today’s new poets are the Irishman W B Yeats and the German language Romanian poet Paul Celan. The poem by Yeats is his prophetic work of 1919, The Second Coming, with a link to a YouTube reading by the late Ted Hughes. From Celan’s poet page there is a link to his own recording of his great Holocaust poem, Todesfüge, with an English translation.

Today’s new poet is Jean Racine, 1638 – 1699, one of the great flowering of French dramatists in the 17th century. See his poet page with portrait here, the blog post with illustration here and hear an extract from his great play Phèdre here in French with an English translation