by phillipw | Oct 15, 2019 | RI, VE
A Detrimental Adulation (with Apologies to Verlaine) So Rimbaud gets the credit, no matter What. Paul accomplishes what no one’s done Before in verses, but Rimbaud’s splatter On paper, like results from a spray gun That spews out vomit from the chewed up...
by phillipw | Oct 15, 2019 | RI, VE
Paroles sans Romances What kept you from a votive candle to That poet? Having him beside you for Two years almost, abandoning the coup You failed as wilting communard in war By running off with genius that could match Or conquer even more than yours, you flunked Your...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | RI, VE
The Genius, l’enfant terrible “that inability to look before or after” ~ Arthur Symons Paul held this genius greater than the size His poet lover had. Paul’s larger gift, A knack for living in tight blinks of eyes, Ignoring past and future, made each rift...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | RI
The Bourgeois Trader in the Wilderness Rimbaud highlighted the risks and difficulties of his life in Africa in letters to his disapproving mother. “This last expedition has exhausted me so much that I often lie in the sun, immobile like an unfeeling stone,” he wrote....
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | RI, VE
Sacrificial Investments “In exile, life was a stage where literature’s masterpieces were played out,” the poet wrote in “Illuminations,” several years before moving to Harar. “I could share untold riches that remain unknown.” ...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | RI, VE
The Blankness of the Prosaic “like an unfeeling stone” ~ Arthur Rimbaud while in Harar What turns a teenage poet into stone Without emotion? Maybe in the nest He made there he had banished joy and groan. Perhaps he planted rocks inside his chest To make the desert...
