Tuckahoe NY Pride

Arthur Rimbaud was a revolutionary French poet whose brief teenage output helped reshape modern literature. A prodigy from Charleville, he shocked Parisian circles with audacious imagery, fractured syntax, and a pursuit of “derangement of the senses” to reach visionary truth. His turbulent affair with poet Paul Verlaine fueled both collaboration and scandal, culminating in Verlaine shooting him in 1873. Rimbaud’s major works include “A Season in Hell” and the prose poems of Illuminations, which anticipate Symbolism and Surrealism of modernist literature. Rimbaud quit writing in his early twenties, spending later years traveling and trading in Africa, and died in Marseille, 1891. His work inspired musicians decades later, including Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith.

From “Stupra II”

Oh! for us to be naked like that,
seeking joy and repose,
facing one’s companion’s glorious part,
both of us free to murmur and sob?