by phillipw | Dec 16, 2019 | RI, VE
A Very Bulldog Welcome The day Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine arrived Together, London was in lovely light. At least it should have been. The sun, deprived Of autumn glory, cringed from urban blight. The coal-fire chimneys’ vileness forced Verlaine To write,...
by phillipw | Dec 14, 2019 | KE, RI, VE
Keats, Rimbaud, Verlaine Day after day I sit and write French verse Forms, villanelles and terzanelles. At noon I leave the British Library. “Much worse Existences,” I say, smugly, “are strewn Across the urban universe.” Today I noticed from the bus Paul...
by phillipw | Dec 13, 2019 | VE
Vesuvian Vengeance Even vengeance has a startling beauty To ancients and their atavistic heirs Around the Middle Sea who love duty To family honor. They connive their snares Into murder and conceive they are Achieving glistening sweetness in the blood. Their lips...
by phillipw | Nov 17, 2019 | RI, VE
The Price of Poetry French Wikipedia “It’s Verlaine just arrived from Brussels…. He is handsome in his own way, and, despite being severely short of clothes, gives no sign of being overwhelmed by...
by phillipw | Nov 17, 2019 | RI, VE
Not Nearly Twenty Thousand Leagues across the Sea Two poets took a science-fiction trip Together, leaving sonnet Europe for Modernity in London. Comic strip Futurity of hardness spread before Them: coal fed dragons belched out smoke and fire On rigid iron tracks...
by phillipw | Oct 30, 2019 | RI, VE
Rimbaud, the Seer, Speaks Somewhere among the beds and sheets of dreams Untroubled sexes sleep. They do not yearn For likeness only, nor for love that seems To need its opposite to make it burn. These drowsy flares are burning in slow, Unspoken prophecies the...
