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 that 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.
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“Critics often claim that 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—
with 19-year-old witty
mocking parisian kid
jean-louis forain—
“gavroche” the scamp
ex-communard
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—
with 19-year-old witty
mocking parisian kid
jean-louis forain—
“gavroche” the scamp
ex-communard
______________________
“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 was 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—is more a “project” than a set of strategies. Living as a poet—is different than just living tout court. Living as a poet—is subject to satire fag feuilleton-esque. Fiction depends on—telling stories, details, mimetic dialog, but prose poetry is—a monologue placed in between the two. The foolish virgin—speaking, inventing her season in 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 was 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—is more a “project” than a set of strategies. Living as a poet—is different than just living tout court. Living as a poet—is subject to satire fag feuilleton-esque. Fiction depends on—telling stories, details, mimetic dialog, but prose poetry is—a monologue placed in between the two. The foolish virgin—speaking, inventing her season in 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 a 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 Commune—rejecting Verlaine and Rimbaud, their gay marriage. Bourgeoisie right—rejecting gay poets as well, those shameless corrupt outlaws. Both left and right—bourgeoisie fearing queers as filthy vice destroying society. As if society needed any help with that, this the great future—people were proclaiming, Rimbaud was worshipping?
“I’m doing some little stories in prose: Pagan Book or Negro Book.” My fate depends—on this book, full of domestic atrocities. More than confessions—it’s pulp fiction poetry, revealing my vices. No ploy, no dialog—narrative half-erased, gay characters ruining a writer without—descriptive or didactic powers, a damned poet full of bad blood like me—someone too instinctive, too savage, too gay. A half-heard dialog—a series of muted lips, some str8t reproaches.If only some of my—ancestors were gay poets, but no, there’s nothing. I'm unable to revolt—or intuit an inferior race, my queer bad blood 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 trader.
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Of course, Rimbaud—doesn’t leave right away. First Season & 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 queerly queenly dystopian desert journey. Infernal bridegroom—putting words in Verlaine’s foolish virgin mouth. He beats her, inflicts—agonies, fears, anxieties, indelicately seducing the daemon, the devil—he’s not himself, you know, a badboy angel in disguise. These rude broad strokes—one sentence against the next, the actual words of lovers. Rimbaud tells Verlaine—love must be reinvented beyond str8t desire. The virgin bride opines—the infernal bridegroom, a blowhard of hot air.
(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 a 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 Commune—rejecting Verlaine and Rimbaud, their gay marriage. Bourgeoisie right—rejecting gay poets as well, those shameless corrupt outlaws. Both left and right—bourgeoisie fearing queers as filthy vice destroying society. As if society needed any help with that, this the great future—people were proclaiming, Rimbaud was worshipping?
“I’m doing some little stories in prose: Pagan Book or Negro Book.” My fate depends—on this book, full of domestic atrocities. More than confessions—it’s pulp fiction poetry, revealing my vices. No ploy, no dialog—narrative half-erased, gay characters ruining a writer without—descriptive or didactic powers, a damned poet full of bad blood like me—someone too instinctive, too savage, too gay. A half-heard dialog—a series of muted lips, some str8t reproaches.If only some of my—ancestors were gay poets, but no, there’s nothing. I'm unable to revolt—or intuit an inferior race, my queer bad blood 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 trader.
__________________________
Of course, Rimbaud—doesn’t leave right away. First Season & 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 queerly queenly dystopian desert journey. Infernal bridegroom—putting words in Verlaine’s foolish virgin mouth. He beats her, inflicts—agonies, fears, anxieties, indelicately seducing the daemon, the devil—he’s not himself, you know, a badboy angel in disguise. These rude broad strokes—one sentence against the next, the actual words of lovers. Rimbaud tells Verlaine—love must be reinvented beyond str8t desire. The virgin bride opines—the infernal bridegroom, a blowhard of hot air.
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