Complete Works: Selected Letters in French and English

After a few scraps of Rimbaud's work had crossed my vision, I was introduced to this translation of his complete works, by Wallace Fowlie. Fowlie has also written a book comparing and contrasting Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, but don't let that lean you one way or the other - Fowlie grasps the emotion of Rimbaud's language and his precision with words, and intent in a way that is often regrettably lost in other translations. Rimbaud's unique and loving but unsentimental, dark vision of the world seems to stick with readers in a way that few poets do - indeed, he was the first poet whose lines I could recite from memory without having been forced to regurgitate them for some well-meaning but misguided lit teacher. That Rimbaud wrote his entire body of work before the age of 21, when he retired from writing, makes him the real deal for the disconnected. If only Holden Caufield fans would put down the little burgundy book and pick this up...