arthur rimbaud

My Bohemia

english translation

My Bohemia

original French poem

Ma bohème

Je m’en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées ;
Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal ;
J’allais sous le ciel, Muse! Et j’étais ton féal ;
Oh! là là! que d’amours splendides j’ai rêvées !

Mon unique culotte avait un large trou.
—Petit Poucet rêveur, j’égrenais dans ma course
Des rimes. Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
—Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou

Et je les écoutais, assis au bord des routes,
Ces bons soirs de septembre où je sentais des gouttes
De rosée à mon front, comme un vin de vigueur ;

Où, rimant au milieu des ombres fantastiques,
Comme des lyres, je tirais les élastiques
De mes souliers blessés, un pied près de mon cœur !

 

Ryan Wilson

Ryan Wilson is the editor of Literary Matters and the author of The Stranger World (Measure Press, 2017), winner of the Donald Justice Prize. Recent work has appeared or will appear in Birmingham Poetry Review, Five Points, the Hopkins Review, the New Criterion, the Sewanee Review, the Yale Review, and The Best American Poetry 2018. He teaches at the Catholic University of America, and he lives with his wife north of Baltimore.

 

 

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud (1854 – 1891) was a French poet who wrote some of the most remarkable poetry and prose of the nineteenth century. He prefigured Surrealism and free verse, and was a major figure in Symbolism. Precocious and miserable in provincial France, he ran away to Paris at sixteen, where he read voraciously and lived in alcoholic squalor, sometimes with Paul Verlaine. Widely regarded as a prodigy, he wrote all of his poetry in the space of less than five years. Before age twenty-one, he burned his last manuscripts and is not known to have written other work.

 

X.J. Kennedy

X.J. Kennedy will have two new books out this year: a comic novel, A Hoarse Half-human Cheer (e-book from Curtis Brown Digital, paperback from CreateSpace) and Fits of Concision: Collected Poems of Six or Fewer Lines (Grolier Poetry Bookshop). His translations include The Bestiary of Guillaume Apollinaire (Johns Hopkins University Press) and the Lysistrata of Aristophanesin the Penn Complete Greek Drama series.

 

 

Vowels

english translation

Vowels

original French poem

Voyelles

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
A, noir corset velue des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d’ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides
Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;

O suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges:
—O l’Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux!

 

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud (1854 – 1891) was a French poet who wrote some of the most remarkable poetry and prose of the 19th century. He prefigured surrealism and free verse, and was a major figure in symbolism. Precocious and miserable in provincial France, he ran away to Paris at 16, where he read voraciously and lived in alcoholic squalor, sometimes with Paul Verlaine. Widely regarded as a prodigy, he wrote all of his poetry in the space of less than five years. Before age 21, he burned his last manuscripts and is not known to have written other work.

 

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