Queer Roman Verse

Centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, as new global empires sought to enshrine the art and literature of their ancient predecessor, some inconvenient truths were lost in translation. Queer love and desire–expressed freely and variously throughout Roman poetry, from the lyrics of Horace to the epics of Virgil and Ovid–had no lexicon in a nineteenth-century English canon shaped by Victorian ideals of family, moral discipline and public virtue. To English readers, the queer contours of Rome became disguised, distorted or erased.

This landmark anthology, spanning four centuries and fourteen major poets, offers a long-overdue correction to the record. Vibrant, nimble meters by award-winning translator C. Luke Soucy keep pace with Latin formulations, revealing a rich current of queer themes that have always been present in those great works of antiquity–and a powerful reminder that what has always been here has always been queer.