Goethe: Erotic Poems, trans. David Luke (OUP, £5.99 in UK)

A good many of Goethe's erotic poems were non legenda in his lifetime, but they can scarcely annoy anybody in these days of four-letter verse. Italy released him from past memories and inhibitions, leading to the Roman Elegies of his first visit and later to the Venetian Epigrams; the final work in this slim volume is the narrative poem The Diary, about an amorous rendezvous in which male virility failed to rise to the occasion. With the Roman poems David Luke courageously tackles the elegiac metre, which does not go easily into English. Much the same ground is stylishly covered by Goethe: Roman Elegies and Other Poems and Epigrams, translated by Michael Hamburger (Anvil, £8.95 in UK).