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Rating: 
Summary: Best Book By The Creator of Modern Poetry!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book By The Creator of Modern Poetry!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this now.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this now.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: don't forget translators' names
Review: this translation was produced by a contemporory American poet Richard Howard, whose poems were included in the Norton Anthology of English Poetry. - English is my third language. - I agree with the review of Howard's version in 'Baudelaire in English'.
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