Biography
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, a French poet, was born Oct.20,1854, in Charleville. His childhood was marred by a 'cantankerous and vindictive' mother and by the discipline of the local school, but his poetic virtuosity was extraordinary. By the age of fifteen he had written verse in imitation of the Romanticists (Vers de College,1932) , and one of his teachers, Izambard, introduced him to contemporary poetry. He was fiercely revolutionary, and wrote the words 'Down with God' on the public benches of Charleville. He ran away from his native town, twice to Paris and once into Belgium, and once he spent 10 days in prison for travelling by train without a ticket. During these escapades, he wrote such poems as Ma Boheme and Le Cabaret vert.
In 1871, in Charleville, he wrote his first prose poems and the Lettres du voyant, and sent to Verlaine a copy of his poem Le Bateau ivre. Verlaine was enthusiastic with the work and encouraged Rimbaud to come to Paris. At this time he had already started the composition of his Illuminations, which was not published until 1886. Verlaine and Rimbaud drifted into an affair. He served in the army of the Commune, and after its fall he went abroad with Verlaine, travelling in England and Belgium. In 1873, in Brussels, he was shot in the wrist by Verlaine, who was condemned to 2 years' imprisonment in the city of Mons for the act. After the incident, Rimbaud wrote a new Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer.
In november 1893, Rimbaud gave up the writing of poetry and started traveling through Europe on foot. He returned once more to Paris and then disappeared for 16 years. Part of this time he spent in the East, but the greater part was in Ethiopia, where he dealt in contraband firearms, in ivory and gold, and perhaps in slaves. In 1891 he became ill, returned to France to have one leg amputated, and died on November 10 in a Marseille hospital.
poem by Arthur Rimbaud
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Tore Down A La Rimbaud
Showed me pictures in the gallery
Showed me novels on the shelf
Put my hands across the table
Gave me knowledge of myself.
Showed me visions, showed me nightmares
Gave me dreams that never end
Showed me light out of the tunnel
When there was darkness all around instead.
Tore down a la rimbaud
And I wish my message would come
Tore down a la rimbaud, you know its hard some time
You know its hard some time.
Showed me ways and means and motions
Showed me what its like to be
Gave me days of deep devotions
Showed me things I cannot see.
Tore down a la rimbaud
And I wish my purpose would come
Tore down a la rimbaud, you know its hard some time.
You know its hard some time.
Showed me different shapes and colours
Showed me many different roads
Gave me very clear instructions
When I was in the dark night of the soul.
Tore down a la rimbaud
And I wish my writing would come
Tore down a la rimbaud, you know its hard some time.
You know its hard some time.
song performed by by Van Morrison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Still Following Her Scarf through a Crowd
Swimming with Cindy
Magical summers lost,
Bike rides through the city
Laughing beneath autumn trees,
Dreams of parks and tennis courts
Still hurt my heart,
Paul Verlaine and Rimbaud days
Innocently writing poems
And singing songs…
I want to love someone
In an astonishing way
But all I embrace anymore
Is my darkness and obscurity.
poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Who was William Shakespeare?
Surely G-D herself
On a short Sabbatical
Taking a break from
Divine forms of Inscription
(Makes one wonder, though
Who on earth was Verlaine?
Who in G-d's name was Rimbaud?)
poem by Frank Bana
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Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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I is another.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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Misfortune was my god.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am there.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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Art is stupid and a lie and, above all, useless.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century Verse
France is the country of poems and prose
the lovely French language tells us so.
Romantic love in classical verse
dates back to Voltaire from days long ago.
The 18th century brought poets from Paris
writing about France and the Seine,
and so many other Parisian wonders
that lie in that fertile plain.
Yes France was a country of talent
In England, Wordsworth stole the scene
whilst Coleridge, another fine English poet
wrote lyrical verse about Pastures Green.
poem by Joyce Hemsley
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Morality is the weakness of the brain.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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I'm intact, and I don't give a damn.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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Morality is the weakness of the mind.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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Immortal Lovers
Paltry wind like thyme heroes
Irish poetry lights a fire
Plain stone epithet with a cross
Yeats sleeps with an ire smile
Limestone is working class
Marble for the Greek legends
Poets spin golden words
Mortal yarn rises like smoke
Ancient pyres outside the village
Battles of freedom in the human duel
Spring sires love in Pushkins bosom
Shelley and Keats lay very close
Wordsworth makes us walk green fields
Milton like a statue in a great square
Khalil Gibran a jewel of wise gentleness
Shakespeare is a fire unquenchable
Rimbaud and Verlaine bring an edge
You have your muse and I mine
The ravens of Poe fly the centuries
Warm me with your poetry my dear
The Brownings have such sweet words
Emily makes us all feel our loneliness
E. E. Cummings a bright warm flame
Pablo Neruda can make me cry
Every poet is an immortal lover
poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
quote by Arthur Rimbaud
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What They Will Say
Some times, I wonder if I write for the future.
That may seem like a strange statement to make.
Forty-three years ago, I wrote a poem
that at the time no one wanted to know.
Now it is my best-loved poem
read by countless people around the world.
Thirty years ago, I wrote two poems
and each one won me an award,
but at the time I wrote them,
no one wanted to know.
All of which makes me wonder
if what I wrote in my yesteryears
that then none wanted to know.
Could they all be popular now?
Today I started collecting and retyping
short stories I wrote twenty years ago.
At the time, publishers and agents
didn’t want to know.
Now twenty year on
I am wondering what they will say.
24 January 2009
poem by David Harris
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