Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works: An Influential Poet's Biography―Visionary Poetry, Prose, and Letters Translated by Paul Schmidt (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

Glad you do not have to fill in all the blanks to post a review. This is a book of poetry, with some letters of Rimbaud's and some historical background on the poet included. Rimbaud was a strange and highly influential poet who appears to have stopped writing poetry about the time he turned 20. He led a wild and odd life -- the editor calls him a combination of avarice, morality, and gullibility -- a bad combination. But as a poet he was revolutionary, helping found both free verse and the prose poem. Not surprisingly, his poems are often hard to follow -- they sometimes read like Dylan's "Tamborine Man," and Dylan himself acknowledged his debt to this French poet. You might want to start out with "The Drunken Boat" to get a flavor of his writings and move on to his slightly more conventional material such as "A Season in Hell." If you like mind-stretching poetry, you'll like this book

Rimbaud’s oeuvre is typically divided Into three stages: adolescent revolt, visionary and descent into a secular hell. A savant who composed revolutionary poetry at the age of sixteen, after the age of twenty Rimbaud stopped writing verse and became an arms dealer in Africa.While I acknowledge the striking imagery of the poems and see how he inspired beatniks like Ginsberg, I admit I stumbled over his proclivity for profanity and blasphemy. He’s somewhat different than a poet like Baudelaire since he deliberately pens provocative condemnations of the Catholic religion as the reason behind many of his poems.I’m by no means a believer, at least not in a traditional sense, and I recognize that the Catholic Church’s political power in late nineteenth century France led to a hatred that few secularists would share today, but I’m not one for deliberately stoking hatred of other’s beliefs.Perhaps, if I had better appreciated the visionary poems and understood how Rimbaud foresaw a new direction, I’d have a more positive impression. But for me his visionary poems were bleak and depressing. I do plan on rereading him at some point to better appreciate his corpus.A unique book, just one I personally didn’t like.

I had never read any of Rimbaud's writing, but this blew my lid off. Great writing in both the poems and letters. I also bought the film "Total Eclipse" which was a great companion. Talk about a boy genius.

Rimbaud at 14 years of age mastered Latin poetry! Although he was an extraordinary genius, he rebelled against family and society almost blindly. Having taken to be sacred the derangement of the senses, he ventured into a hallucinatory world where he tried to give the ineffable a descriptive voice. Thus his theory of "pure poetry". Rimbaud eventually gave up on writing verse, and became an explorer of some renown. He returned to France to die in his late 30's. Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works at least contains the original French texts, and the English translations are excellent. The latter portion of this remarkable book deals mainly with Rimbaud's letters to several people, including Verlaine. And while Verlaine eventually made peace with himself, unfortunately Rimbaud did not. On his gravestone is written simply the words: "Pray For Him".

I had read Rimbuad for a class in undergrad and wanted to read some more of his work. When I received this copy I was surprised to find it was a different translation than what I had read in college. The Wallace Fowlie translation that I had previously read has a much stronger voice and poetic expression than this one by Paul Schmidt.Take the first stanza of "The Drunken Boat" as an example:Schmidt's translation-"I drifted on a river I could not controlNo longer guided by the bargemen's ropesThey were captured by howling IndiansWho nailed them to colored stakes"And here Fowlie's-"As I was going down impassive Rivers,I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:Yelping redskins had taken them as targetsAnd had nailed them naked to colored stakes."Schmidt simplifies down the language of Rimbaud and mutes the feeling of Rimbaud's writing. Disappointed in this translation and I will be looking for a copy that is not Schmidt's translation.

Combine Rimbaud with Hart Crane, and you get the best post Walt Whitman verse epic of all time.

Great complete Works in translation.

Historical artifact. Must read

My daughter was very happy with her unexpected gift.

The print was large enough even for me, although I have still not read it all, it now as pride of place amongst my poetry books

Very good.

Renders inert Rimbaud's voice. Look elsewhere.

Nice book, great aAuthor and words but what bugs me is 1- pages are high quality but snowy white instead of the usual cream or off white and 2- more importantly why is the red cover glossy instead of what I had imagined to be a cool matte red cover!? Oh well !