Flowers of Evil and Other Works - Charles Baudelaire, Wallace Fowler

Music often takes me like a sea! Toward my star so pale, Under the mists of a vast canopy, I put out to sail; My chest heaves forward, my lungs fill like canvas in a gale, I scale the backs of waves that swell below the night's veil; I feel the tremble in me of all passions a vessel suffers through; A good wind, a storm and its convulsions, walls of endless blue Rock me. Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-67, French poet and critic. His poetry introduced symbolism. The only volume of his poems published in his lifetime, Les Fleurs du mal (1857) was publicly condemned as obscene, and six of the poems were suppressed. Later it was ...  Read the complete review

"A long time I lived under vast porticoes... It is there I lived in serene sensuousness, In the midst of blue sky, waves, splendour And naked slaves, impregnated with perfumes, Who cooled my brow with palms, And whose one care was to understand The grievous secret which made me sad." From the poem "Former Life" by Charles Baudelaire, from the book FLOWERS OF EVIL AND OTHER WORKS, published in the Bantam dual-language series. Baudlaire was the first "modern" poet. Les Fleurs du Mal was published in 1857, and revealed Baudlaire's genius. Genius, according to Baudlaire, was ...  Read the complete review