The iconic Renaissance songbook—an inspiration to love poets since the fourteenth century—in an elegant, fluid, and inviting translation.

Petrarch’s Canzoniere stands as one of the greatest and most influential collections of love poetry ever written. Expressing his unrequited devotion for Laura—with whom the young poet fell in love at first sight—the Canzoniere explores the tension between Petrarch’s earthly desire and his spiritual longing for divine grace. In this monumental translation, the project of a lifetime, renowned poet A.M. Juster preserves the original text’s formal elegance, honoring Petrarch’s rhyme and meter while also capturing the profound religious and philosophical undertones that imbue the work. Unlike earlier translations that framed the Canzoniere as mere “troubadour poetry,” this version, with a rich and informative introduction by Andrew Frisardi and extensive notes by the translator, highlights its classical roots and modern sensibility. Juster, a celebrated poet and translator, brings Petrarch’s vision to life with precision and grace, offering a rendition that is both faithful to the original and eminently accessible to contemporary readers.

"The poet A. M. Juster has a bit of fun with the name of an aquatic animal children tend to adore in Girlatee, a small, snug picture book illustrated by Grant Silverstein . . .

—Wall Street Journal

Girlatee is the story of a young manatee who becomes separated from her parents by a reckless man on a speedboat. She beaches on hot sand, and people take selfies instead of helping her. When a kind person calls for assistance, two Game and Wildlife Department officers help the girlatee back into the ocean. With beautiful rhymes and enchanting illustrations, Girlatee reminds us of the importance of family bonds and caring for others in distress.

Now in its second printing

Wonder & Wrath is the latest book of original and translated poetry from A. M. Juster, one of America’s most respected poets and translators. These poems display great formal accomplishment and deliver pleasure in the act of reading them―especially aloud. Rooted in the tradition, the poems in Wonder & Wrath have appeared in Poetry, The Hudson Review, Rattle and many other top journals. Read this book of poems from start to finish; you’ll enjoy every one of them!

Emily Wilson, the noted translator of The Odyssey, has written that “A.M. Juster’s translation of Milton’s elegiac verse, rendered in elegant English elegiacs, provides Latin-less readers with a readable, accurate, metrical rendering of this important and undeservedly neglected set of poems, accompanied by useful notes and introduction. By writing these poems, the young John Milton defined himself as a master of Latin verse form, but also explored love, friendship, poetics, obedience and revolution, in ways that are related to, but fascinatingly different from, his later English-language poetry. Juster makes the young Milton live again, in a fresh and contemporary idiom.”

A. M. Juster has translated the complete elegies of Maximianus faithfully but not literally, resulting in texts that work beautifully as poetry in English. Replicating the feel of the original Latin verse, he alternates iambic hexameter and pentameter in couplets and imitates Maximianus's pronounced internal rhyme, alliteration, and assonance.

If, as William Blake insisted, “Opposition is true friendship,” A. M. Juster and Billy Collins should be bosom buddies. The two poets are complete opposites, Juster a formalist and a classicist; Collins, a populist free-verser. But this hilarious collection brings them together as a comedy team, albeit Collins may chafe at having to play the straight man.

Sleaze & Slander collects twenty years of the humorous verse of a poet funny enough to revive the nearly lost art of light verse. His mastery of meter and rhyme allows him to deliver the unexpected punchline flawlessly. 

The first and one of the finest Latin poets of Anglo-Saxon England, the seventh-century bishop Saint Aldhelm can justly be called “Britain’s first man of letters.”

This translation is highly enjoyable, giving a Latinless reader a vivid impression of these self-conscious poems."—Times Literary Supplement

"The best edition available of the 'Satires' in English. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice

Juster's translation reproduces Tibullus's verses in simple yet polished language, and it contains many creative and appealing turns of phrase." - The Classical Journal, Robert J. Ball

"A.M Juster's verse translation is clear and helpful ... an excellent introduction and notes" - Translation and Literature