A biography of the poet. I completely missed the Rimbaud thing when I was a teen, which is probably the best time of life to associate with him. I remember Chemsa reading a book of his poetry when we were living together in England and her pointing him out to me in the painting at d'Orsay. I remember Paul Pope using a quote of his in a short piece he did. I've eaten at the Drunken Boat in Berkeley, named after one of his poems. But that has been the extent of my experience of him and his poetry. Robb does an extremely good job of capturing Rimbaud's life story, pointing out the qualities of his work that have made him such an inspiration to other countercultural icons. I have to say Rimbaud ultimately comes out looking like quite the unsavory and unsympathetic character, despite all his early literary brilliance, and I would have been interested to read more about his influence on artists closer to my time. Still, I was impressed at how engrossing the book was to me. I usually go a little cross-eyed reading biographies.
Heidi J. De Vries
A biography of the poet. I completely missed the Rimbaud thing when I was a teen, which is probably the best time of life to associate with him. I remember Chemsa reading a book of his poetry when we were living together in England and her pointing him out to me in the painting at d'Orsay. I remember Paul Pope using a quote of his in a short piece he did. I've eaten at the Drunken Boat in Berkeley, named after one of his poems. But that has been the extent of my experience of him and his poetry. Robb does an extremely good job of capturing Rimbaud's life story, pointing out the qualities of his work that have made him such an inspiration to other countercultural icons. I have to say Rimbaud ultimately comes out looking like quite the unsavory and unsympathetic character, despite all his early literary brilliance, and I would have been interested to read more about his influence on artists closer to my time. Still, I was impressed at how engrossing the book was to me. I usually go a little cross-eyed reading biographies.
