The Drunken Boat

A new translation of the best and most provocative work by France's infamous rebel poet.

The short, astonishingly precocious, uncompromisingly rebellious, ultimately disastrous career of the poet Arthur Rimbaud is one of the legends of modern literature. Between 1870 and 1875, which is to say between his 15th and his 20th year, Arthur Rimbaud wrote a series of poems in prose and verse, along with his lacerating confession and farewell to literature, A Season in Hell, that are not only masterpieces in their own right but that transformed the very idea of what poetry is, not only in French but throughout the world. Without Rimbaud, surrealism is inconceivable, and his influence is palpable in artists as otherwise different as John Ashbery and Patti Smith. Mark Polizzotti is one of the most celebrated translators from French to English today. This volume offers authoritative and inspired new versions of Rimbaud's major poems and letters as well as the entirety of A Season in Hell.