Poetry in Foreign Languages

This semester i was enrolled in a french writing class where we tackled french poetry (including some poets we covered in class, like baudelaire and appolinaire). reading the poems in their original language and format was very interesting, because it led me to realize how each language has its own poetry language. since french, specifically, is not a language where how a syllable is stressed is what is important, french poems have no emphasis on meter like poems written in english. however, the number of syllables in each line is vital to the format of classic french poetry. for example, when reading baudelaire's famous spleen poems in french and then reading various english translations was just a reminder of how the idea of beauty of poetry language differs greatly in each language. reading a translation does not capture the essence of the poem in its original language