Twenty Prose Poems (French and English Edition)

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."

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet, essayist, art critic and translator for Edgar Allan Poe. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" to describe the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.

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Anywhere Out Of The World
At One O'clock In The Morning
Confiteor Of The Artist
Crowds
The Double Room
The Eyes Of The Poor
The Favours Of The Moon
The Fool And The Venus
The Generous Gamester
Get Drunk!
A Hemisphere In A Head Of Hair
Invitation To The Voyage
Let's Beat Up The Poor
Loss Of A Halo
The Mirror
The Old Woman's Despair
The Port
Solitude
The Soup And The Clouds
Which Is The True One?
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® Read more Continue reading Read less