L'enfant Terrible
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“Keeping the visionary and the orphic aspects of “The Drunken Boat” but expressing them in short lines.”—Edmund White, Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
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Deep blue eyes, big hands, big feet, sullen, sulky kid. More anti-social than timid, “notorious murderer” Miss Goncourt said. All the Parnassians hated him but craved his corrupted muse. Ditching alexandrines, alienating Miss Banville, sneering at tradition, redoing Miss Baudelaire in her orphic urban drag. Calmer, cooler, sublime lyric compressed intricate visualizations plunging poetry deeper.
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“Critics often claim creative sparks fly when the themes and techniques of genre literature get elevated to high art.”—Edmund White, Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
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Deep blue eyes, big hands, big feet, sullen, sulky kid. More anti-social than timid, “notorious murderer” Miss Goncourt said. All the Parnassians hated him but craved his corrupted muse. Ditching alexandrines, alienating Miss Banville, sneering at tradition, redoing Miss Baudelaire in her orphic urban drag. Calmer, cooler, sublime lyric compressed intricate visualizations plunging poetry deeper.
_______________________
“Critics often claim creative sparks fly when the themes and techniques of genre literature get elevated to high art.”—Edmund White, Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
Deeper into feuilleton—beyond merely anecdotal, elevated into high art. Only Miss Verlaine seemed to like the vile, vicious, disgusting, smutty kid. Only savage young Rimbaud encouraged Verlaine to write like a gay seer. Arthur Rimbaud was an infant french prodigy, a modern performance artist already. Rimbaud was chicken deluxe a dominant adolescent who was homoerotically ready, a young gay seer striking Baudelaire’s pose without bourgeois drag. A young voyant rather than eccentric gay bohemian Parnassian queen.
Asshole Sonnet
“Verlaine was weak
in everything, except
poetic talent.”
—Edmund Lepelletier
Rimbaud: A Double Life
it’s alive—
it breathes, lurking
in smutty darkness
it pouts—
it puckers, insolent
bourgeois bunghole
it weeps—
pale white buttocks
pierced by pride
it sobs—
a swamp of tears
in queer quicksand
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it squeezes—
milking heavenly
flutes of candy
soon hash and—
absinthe is busy
loosening it up
rimbaud ending up—
as 16-year-old witty
mocking parisian kid
ask jean-louis forain—
“gavroche” the scamp
ex-communard buddy
Asshole Sonnet
“Verlaine was weak
in everything, except
poetic talent.”
—Edmund Lepelletier
Rimbaud: A Double Life
it’s alive—
it breathes, lurking
in smutty darkness
it pouts—
it puckers, insolent
bourgeois bunghole
it weeps—
pale white buttocks
pierced by pride
it sobs—
a swamp of tears
in queer quicksand
__________________
it squeezes—
milking heavenly
flutes of candy
soon hash and—
absinthe is busy
loosening it up
rimbaud ending up—
as 16-year-old witty
mocking parisian kid
ask jean-louis forain—
“gavroche” the scamp
ex-communard buddy
______________________
“You’re unlucky—possessed by strange disquieting innocence,” Miss Verlaine says. Pitiful Verlaine—the frightful nights Rimbaud owned her. He would jeer at her—losing himself in nocturnal extravagances to come. He would lie down—let her mouth make love to him sorrowfully. They were at last ready to return to primitive poetry. They had the place—and the formula to be voyant. Rimbaud’s bad luck—consumes him, all his hunger and lust. He cultivates it, he wants bad luck—to nourish him but he has no illusion. He can’t laugh—at anything anymore, bad luck won’t let him. Living as a poet—as more a “project” than a set of strategies. Living as a poet—as different than just living tout court. Living as a poet—as subject to satire fag feuilleton-esque. Fiction depending on—telling stories, details, mimetic dialog, while prose poetry as—monologue placed in between the two. The foolish virgin—the infernal bridegroom, speaking, inventing their gay season in str8t hell.
“You’re unlucky—possessed by strange disquieting innocence,” Miss Verlaine says. Pitiful Verlaine—the frightful nights Rimbaud owned her. He would jeer at her—losing himself in nocturnal extravagances to come. He would lie down—let her mouth make love to him sorrowfully. They were at last ready to return to primitive poetry. They had the place—and the formula to be voyant. Rimbaud’s bad luck—consumes him, all his hunger and lust. He cultivates it, he wants bad luck—to nourish him but he has no illusion. He can’t laugh—at anything anymore, bad luck won’t let him. Living as a poet—as more a “project” than a set of strategies. Living as a poet—as different than just living tout court. Living as a poet—as subject to satire fag feuilleton-esque. Fiction depending on—telling stories, details, mimetic dialog, while prose poetry as—monologue placed in between the two. The foolish virgin—the infernal bridegroom, speaking, inventing their gay season in str8t hell.
The Spiritual Hunt
(La Chasse Spirituelle)
it was a stunt—
they’d been plotting
it for simply months
getting back again—
staging a fag farce
a temporary ruse
obscene and sexual—
the letters between both
lovers simply shocking!
poor mathilde—
she wasn’t ready for
marriage as gay sham
princess mouse—
miserable carrot fairy
bedbug waiting for a pot
verlaine without emotion—
everything a melodrama
comedy & gallows humor
London: shape of the future—London as both warning & promise of things to come. Rather amazing how—London society back then was like America today. Exiled communards left over from the (Cold War) Commune—rejecting Verlaine and Rimbaud, their gauche gay marriage. Bourgeoisie right wingers—rejecting gay poets, my dears, such shameless corrupt society outlaws. Both left and right—the str8t bourgeoisie fearing queers as filthy vice destroying society etc. As if society needed any help with that, this mini Fall of Rome—shaming what Rimbaud was worshipping?
“I’m doing some little stories in prose: Pagan Book or Negro Book.” My fate depends—on these books, full of domestic atrocities. More than just the usual confessions—it’s gay pulp fiction poetry instead, all my revealing tacky, obscene vices. No Parnassian ploy, just Parisian dish—miss narrative half-erased, gay characters ruining the young writer, course—skip the boring descriptive and crummy didactic powers, what good is all that for a damned poet full of bad blood like me—someone who's much too instinctive, much too savage, much too gay. Let there be a half-heard dialog in the background—a series of muted remarks, some str8t reproaches. If only some of my—ancestors were gay poets, but no, there’s nothing. I'm unable to revolt—or intuit my inferior gay race, instead my queer bad blood simply flows like absinthe. My stra8t dayz are over—good riddance, I'm leaving Europe for good, I’ll be practical & brutal, a gun-runner, a merchant, a slave-trader.
__________________________
Of course, Miss Rimbaud—doesn’t leave right away. First Season & then Illumination, two books written simultaneously, back to back exploring two opposing warring genres . A a season in hell—mock-confessional, camp, retrospectively queenly. Illuminations—cool, calm, futuristic snapshots, queerly dystopian desert journey. Infernal bridegroom—putting words in Verlaine’s foolish virgin mouth. I beat her, inflict the usual—agonies, fears, anxieties, indelicately reducing myself in print to the seducing daemon, the devil as Ardennes trick—I'm not himself, you know, I'm just a badboy angel in disguise. These rude broad strokes—one sentence against the next, the actual words of lovers. I tell Verlaine—love must be reinvented beyond str8t desire. The poor virgin bride opines—the infernal bridegroom is simply too much for her. Perhaps in Aden, I can find a better lover.
(La Chasse Spirituelle)
it was a stunt—
they’d been plotting
it for simply months
getting back again—
staging a fag farce
a temporary ruse
obscene and sexual—
the letters between both
lovers simply shocking!
poor mathilde—
she wasn’t ready for
marriage as gay sham
princess mouse—
miserable carrot fairy
bedbug waiting for a pot
verlaine without emotion—
everything a melodrama
comedy & gallows humor
London: shape of the future—London as both warning & promise of things to come. Rather amazing how—London society back then was like America today. Exiled communards left over from the (Cold War) Commune—rejecting Verlaine and Rimbaud, their gauche gay marriage. Bourgeoisie right wingers—rejecting gay poets, my dears, such shameless corrupt society outlaws. Both left and right—the str8t bourgeoisie fearing queers as filthy vice destroying society etc. As if society needed any help with that, this mini Fall of Rome—shaming what Rimbaud was worshipping?
“I’m doing some little stories in prose: Pagan Book or Negro Book.” My fate depends—on these books, full of domestic atrocities. More than just the usual confessions—it’s gay pulp fiction poetry instead, all my revealing tacky, obscene vices. No Parnassian ploy, just Parisian dish—miss narrative half-erased, gay characters ruining the young writer, course—skip the boring descriptive and crummy didactic powers, what good is all that for a damned poet full of bad blood like me—someone who's much too instinctive, much too savage, much too gay. Let there be a half-heard dialog in the background—a series of muted remarks, some str8t reproaches. If only some of my—ancestors were gay poets, but no, there’s nothing. I'm unable to revolt—or intuit my inferior gay race, instead my queer bad blood simply flows like absinthe. My stra8t dayz are over—good riddance, I'm leaving Europe for good, I’ll be practical & brutal, a gun-runner, a merchant, a slave-trader.
__________________________
Of course, Miss Rimbaud—doesn’t leave right away. First Season & then Illumination, two books written simultaneously, back to back exploring two opposing warring genres . A a season in hell—mock-confessional, camp, retrospectively queenly. Illuminations—cool, calm, futuristic snapshots, queerly dystopian desert journey. Infernal bridegroom—putting words in Verlaine’s foolish virgin mouth. I beat her, inflict the usual—agonies, fears, anxieties, indelicately reducing myself in print to the seducing daemon, the devil as Ardennes trick—I'm not himself, you know, I'm just a badboy angel in disguise. These rude broad strokes—one sentence against the next, the actual words of lovers. I tell Verlaine—love must be reinvented beyond str8t desire. The poor virgin bride opines—the infernal bridegroom is simply too much for her. Perhaps in Aden, I can find a better lover.
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