OVID'S EPIC POEM--whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages--has become one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante's time to the present day, when writers such as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino have found a living source in Ovid's work. In this new, long-anticipated translation of Metamorphoses, Charles Martin combines a close fidelity to Ovid's text with verse that catches the speed and liveliness of the original. Portions of the translation have already appeared in such publications as Arion, The Formalist, The Tennessee Quarterly, and TriQuarterly. Hailed in Newsweek for his translation of The Poems of Catullus ("Charles Martin is an American poet; he puts the poetry, the immediacy of the streets back into the English Catullus. The effect is electric"), Martin's translation of Metamorphoses will be the translation of choice for contemporary readers.