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A review by christinecc
Poèmes Saturniens by Paul Verlaine
4.0
I mean, it's Verlaine. He wrote beautiful poetry, there's not a whole lot for me to say. I grew up having to learn or analyze a lot of his poems, and then of course there were plenty featured in paperback French poetry collections. Poemes Saturniens doesn't contain all the hits, but it has a fair amount of good verses (as well as some that Verlaine thought would be either funny or shocking, or both).
It's easy to read Verlaine without thinking of him as a person because, for a long time, he wasn't a person. He was a poet and a name for me to say at the end of a recitation at the front of the class. He had this "great love affair" with Arthur Rimbaud, another good poet, and it ended with a (serious? drunken?) murder attempt on Rimbaud and a stint in jail for Verlaine. Honestly, the more I read about Verlaine and his life, the more difficult I find it to enjoy his poetry, which is disappointing because he really does write some great stuff. But it's hard to imagine where he drew such beautiful thoughts from when, frankly, he did a lot of horrible things (and the "great love affair" looked, um, very twisted and unhealthy upon closer inspection). A lot of people do horrible things, so I guess it's not a surprise, but it's still a letdown.
The one good thing that's come out of growing up and learning more about the poet without the pedestal is that I can enjoy the poetry for what it is: poetry. It wasn't written by a god or a paragon of perfection. Some of it is excellent, some of it is playful, and yes, some of it is a little stale or corny. When you read the whole work, not just a few poems in isolation, you get a better sense of the writer as a human. You notice themes that bounce from work to work, and you can almost tell which ideas inspired them versus which ones felt kind of forced. What I'm saying is, if you've never sat down to read a poetry book by your favorite poet, you really should. You might not like all of it, but you'll come out with a lot of appreciation for what truly shines through and how it developed.
Recommended if you can read French. Please don't read poetry in translation if you can help it, it's a really weird experience and I'm not sure how it works (technically the translation itself is a whole other poem that can be just as masterfully crafted). Maybe some Emily Dickinson or William Wordsworth would do?
It's easy to read Verlaine without thinking of him as a person because, for a long time, he wasn't a person. He was a poet and a name for me to say at the end of a recitation at the front of the class. He had this "great love affair" with Arthur Rimbaud, another good poet, and it ended with a (serious? drunken?) murder attempt on Rimbaud and a stint in jail for Verlaine. Honestly, the more I read about Verlaine and his life, the more difficult I find it to enjoy his poetry, which is disappointing because he really does write some great stuff. But it's hard to imagine where he drew such beautiful thoughts from when, frankly, he did a lot of horrible things (and the "great love affair" looked, um, very twisted and unhealthy upon closer inspection). A lot of people do horrible things, so I guess it's not a surprise, but it's still a letdown.
The one good thing that's come out of growing up and learning more about the poet without the pedestal is that I can enjoy the poetry for what it is: poetry. It wasn't written by a god or a paragon of perfection. Some of it is excellent, some of it is playful, and yes, some of it is a little stale or corny. When you read the whole work, not just a few poems in isolation, you get a better sense of the writer as a human. You notice themes that bounce from work to work, and you can almost tell which ideas inspired them versus which ones felt kind of forced. What I'm saying is, if you've never sat down to read a poetry book by your favorite poet, you really should. You might not like all of it, but you'll come out with a lot of appreciation for what truly shines through and how it developed.
Recommended if you can read French. Please don't read poetry in translation if you can help it, it's a really weird experience and I'm not sure how it works (technically the translation itself is a whole other poem that can be just as masterfully crafted). Maybe some Emily Dickinson or William Wordsworth would do?