Experimental feature: Order Twenty Prose Poems from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.

               

Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 841.8
EAN: 9780872862166
ISBN: 087286216X
Label: City Lights Publishers
Manufacturer: City Lights Publishers
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 100
Publication Date: 1988-05
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Studio: City Lights Publishers

From the introduction by Michael Hamburger:

"Baudelaire's prose poems were written at long intervals during the last twelve or thirteen years of his life. The prose poem was a medium much suited to his habits and character. Being pre-eminently a moralist, he needed a medium that enabled him to illustrate a moral insight as briefly and vividly as possible. Being an artist and sensualist, he needed a medium that was epigrammatic or aphoristic, but allowed him scope for fantasy and for that element of suggestiveness which he considered essential to beauty. His thinking about society and politics, as about everything else, was experimental; like the thinking of most poets it drew on experience and imagination, rather than on facts and general arguments. That is another reason why the prose poem proved a medium so congenial to Baudelaire."

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: One of the first modern poets
Review: Modernity is what defines the work of Baudelaire. No elegant poems of love; no countryside-dreaming; no evocation of the Classics nor references to the past. On the contrary: urban life; the alienation brought aboout by capitalism; the angst of poor urban dwellers; alcohol and drugs. Poetry is no more just the search for beauty through words. Now, it is a vehicle for the expression of the individual. Content is more important than form, and therefore Baudelaire gets rid of the constraints imposed by verse, even free verse, and lets his soul spill out in a not lyrical, but dark manner.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Evocative
Review: These prose poems were my first experience with Baudelaire. I didn't know what to expect, but they're pretty good. They are often vague, but even then manage to be evocative. I'll admit I also bought the book to help my French along (as it is bilingual), but it's Baudelaire and it's good and sometimes thought-provoking reading. Enivrez-vous! De vin, de poesie, de vertu, a votre guise. Enjoy.

---

---