On making the masterpiece -- Laura Riding and her traveling circus -- Robed in images : the memoirs of James Merrill -- Partying on Parnassus : the New York school of poets -- Wilde the poet -- "When the ecstatic body grips" -- First-class mail : a wit and his world -- Squaring the circle : Stéphane Mallarmé -- Rimbaud, the anarchic demiurge -- A great, baggy monster: Rilke's "Duino elegies" -- Death fugues : the poems of Paul Celan -- Anna Akhmatova -- Brodsky in retrospect -- On translation -- Traduttore, traditore, or, The tradition of traducing -- Victimized Verlaine.