About the Author

Wyatt Mason has translated five books by Pierre Michon, including The Origin of the World and Masters and Servants, a finalist for the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. He is at work on translations of Dante's La Vita Nuova and Rimbaud's letters, both for the Modern Library. His writing has appeared in Harper's, The Nation, and other publications.

Reviews

“The definitive translation for our time.” —Edward Hirsch

“Wyatt Mason has located and tapped into Rimbaud’s voice as it swings from gnarled to straight-ahead to mystic to raucous.” —Roger Shattuck

“An important introduction of Rimbaud to another generation of readers.” —Booklist

“The best opportunity thus far to experience Rimbaud as fully as possible in English. Here is Rimbaud uncensored: the savage maker, the scathing satirist, the rigorous Alchemist of the Word, the master of metrics and innovator of the prose poem, the figure who made himself absolutely modern, the poetic visionary whose work systematically disorders the senses and resonates with a strange beauty, an exultant splendor.” —Edward Hirsch

“A welcome addition to the shelf of Rimbaud in English. Mason’s tireless zeal and endless inventiveness compel unfailing admiration.” —Arthur Goldhammer

"The definitive translation for our time." -Edward Hirsch

"Wyatt Mason has located and tapped into Rimbaud's voice as it swings from gnarled to straight-ahead to mystic to raucous." -Roger Shattuck

"An important introduction of Rimbaud to another generation of readers." -Booklist

"The best opportunity thus far to experience Rimbaud as fully as possible in English. Here is Rimbaud uncensored: the savage maker, the scathing satirist, the rigorous Alchemist of the Word, the master of metrics and innovator of the prose poem, the figure who made himself absolutely modern, the poetic visionary whose work systematically disorders the senses and resonates with a strange beauty, an exultant splendor." -Edward Hirsch

"A welcome addition to the shelf of Rimbaud in English. Mason's tireless zeal and endless inventiveness compel unfailing admiration." -Arthur Goldhammer

The quintessential Symbolist pote maudit, Rimbaud has achieved a legendary, almost mythic reputation, yet he left behind a relatively small body of work, all of it written before the age of 20. The chronological arrangement in this retrospective includes all of Rimbaud's creative works, not only his most famous ones the synesthetic "Vowels," the allegorical "Drunken Boat," the psychically oneiric "Season in Hell," and all the innovative prose poems of "Illuminations" but also almost 100 of previously untranslated materials: fragments, reconstructions, lyrical juvenilia, and school compositions. Despite the editor's claim to comprehensiveness, however, the collection contains only five letters, a mere fraction of his extant correspondence. The visionary, imaginative verse precludes both a literal translation and convincing English meter; Mason fares no worse than any of his predecessors in that regard. A bilingual index of titles and first lines would have facilitated access for those unfamiliar with the sequence of composition. Nevertheless, this is an important new rendering of a major poet and is recommended for all collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/01.] Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.