Baudelaire: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) [Hardcover]

Charles Baudelaire (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1993 | Series: Everyman's Library Pocket Poets

Modern poetry begins with Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), who employed his unequalled technical mastery to create the shadowy, desperately dramatic urban landscape -- populated by the addicted and the damned -- which so compellingly mirrors our modern condition. Deeply though darkly spiritual, titanic in the changes he wrought, Baudelaire looms over all the work, great and small, created in his wake.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Also available in everyman's library pocket poets

W. H. Auden

William Blake

Lord Byron

Emily Dickinson

John Donne

Thomas Hardy

Gerard Manley Hopkins

John Keats

Edgar Allan Poe

Arthur Rimbaud

Christina Rossetti

William Shakespeare

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Wallace Stevens

Walt Whitman

William Wordsworth

Animal Poems

Erotic Poems

Friendship Poems

Love Poems

Prayers

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Everyman's Library (November 2, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679429107
• ISBN-13: 978-0679429104
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.6 x 6.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #369,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy this now., July 12, 2000

By 

Mike Jaynes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baudelaire: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) (Hardcover)

the "Everyman's" series is the best stocking stuffers ever created. I am a bit of a Baudelaire buff, and I must say, this small version is perhaps my favorite. There is not much else to say. I have spent the time sorting through the poorly translated, badly misquoted versions of Flowers of Evil. Learn from my mistake. Pass by the frilly, big, seventeen color dustjacket editions and buy this little guy. It will not dissapoint you. Good day.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book By The Creator of Modern Poetry!, October 3, 2000

By 

Shantonu (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baudelaire: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) (Hardcover)

Baudelaire is credited, along with Whitman and Dickinson, with being the inventor of modern poetry. I wish someone would actually explain why modern poetry begins with him. (email anyone?)

But this book really is great. Get the Everyman's Pocket Poet's version. It's got all (or almost all, I haven't counted) of Baudelaire's masterpiece "Les Fleur Du Mal," in a good translation by Richard Howard (though also check out Norman Shapiro's). And it has selections from Michael Hamburger's wonderful translation of Baudelaire's prose poems, "Le Spleen Du Paris." The best of these is "GET DRUNK," or "Enivrez-vous!" It begins:

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing. ....

Baudelaire was full of dark energy like that. It disgusts and attracts. When it gets tiresome--and, like too much honey and too much Delacroix, reading about maggots eating lovers' flesh, will get tiresome--just put it down. When you pick it up you'll get some fresh insights. How fresh? As fresh as the in simile B. uses in "the Vampire": "bind[ing] me . . . as gambler to his winning streak." Nicely done. Plus the book is small so you can sneak it into work and easily goof off.

5.0 out of 5 stars Sublime, May 4, 2011

By 

Mr. Steiner (New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Baudelaire: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) (Hardcover)

This beautiful collection of Baudelaire includes Les Fleurs du mal as well as several prose poems. Richard Howard has produced an extraordinary translation of this singularly great poet. Baudelaire's place as a symbolist and one of the founding figures of modern poetry are beyond doubt. His woven attunement to the modern condition, with haunting observations of crowd psychology, drugs, prostitution, and disease are incomparable representations of urban life. Les Fleurs du mal rightly became a paradigmatic text which would provide the vision of a future poetic landscape for Rimbaud, Mallarme, and Valery. This collection is artfully arranged and impressively translated.