Reviews

Arthur Rimbaud's poetry has a combination of very detailed imagery that doesn't evoke a lot of emotions from me and also depressing subjects or treatments of subjects. I don't think any of his poems were really happy, at best they had a detached appreciation for beauty. His sad poems were all sorrowful at arm's length, focused on other people in a sympathetic rather than empathetic way, and never about his immediate experience (at least not comprehensibly to me).

The following was my favorite of his poems, and while not really characteristic of his subject matter it shows off his use of imagery pretty well.

Dawn
I have kissed the summer dawn. Before the palaces, nothing moved. The water
lay dead. Battalions of shadows still kept the forest road.
I walked, walking warm and vital breath, While stones watched, and wings rose
soundlessly.
My first adventure, in a path already gleaming With a clear pale light, Was a
flower who told me its name.
I laughted at the blond Wasserfall That threw its hair across the pines: On the
silvered summit, I came upon the goddess.
Then one by one, I lifted her veils. In the long walk, waving my arms.
Across the meadow, where I betrayed her to the cock. In the heart of town she
fled among the steeples and domes, And I hunted her, scrambling like a beggar
on marble wharves.
Above the road, near a thicket of laurel, I caught her in her gathered veils, And
smelled the scent of her immense body. Dawn and the child fell together at the
bottom of the wood.
When I awoke, it was noon.