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.

Daryl Hine was born in 1936 in British Columbia. He read Classics and Philosophy at McGill University before going, with the aid of several grants, to live in Paris. In 1962 he went to the United States and in 1967 took a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, where he subsequently taught. He later gave courses at Northwestern University and at the University of Illinois (Chicago). From 1968 to 1978 he edited Poetry magazine. He has published ten collections of