The Complete Poems of Michelangelo

October 1, 1998
The greatest artist of the human figure was also one of Renaissance Italy's greatest poets. Observing the originals' meters and rhyming, though not always according to the original schemes, Nims' translations allow us to appreciate that greatness. Like other Renaissance poets, Michelangelo wrote primarily of love. Like Shakespeare, Michelangelo loved both men and women and both spiritually "fair" and "dark" ladies. Unlike Shakespeare, he specified who the men and the fair lady were, though not who "the lady beautiful and cruel" was. That this great artist represents himself as unworthy of his loves and frustrated by his inadequacies (many of them having to do with his age, for these are poems written mostly in his 60s and later to much younger beloveds) is conventional--other sonneteers and madrigalists of the time voiced similar sentiments--yet as Nims' accompanying text makes clear, it is also psychologically accurate. Those still hankering, after "The Agony and the Ecstasy" and several biographies, to know what the greatest Western artist "was like" should turn to these poems. ((Reviewed October 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)