An homage and reply to some of France's best-known poets, including
Charles Baudelaire and Raymond Queneau, this collection moves through
the streets of Paris, commenting on its inhabitants, its writers, its
monumental past, and all its possible futures. Alternating between
honesty and evasion, erudition and comedy, The Form of a City Changes
Faster, Alas, Than the Human Heart explores a Paris that's no longer
"the one we used to find." A sometimes mocking, sometimes poignant
tribute to the City of Light, Jacques Roubaud's poetry is filled with
the melancholic playfulness that has made him one of our most important
contemporary writers.