2 h 19 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when a teenage rebel decides poetry must unsettle every sense?
Arthur Rimbaud’s Complete Poems follows a restless young voice from schoolboy sonnets to verse that breaks the rules of rhyme and meter. Here is a country walker, a furious rebel and a poet who wants to become a seer. His poems turn anger, mockery and wild images into a challenge to what poetry can do.
The collection moves through early poems, the rebellious verse surrounding the Paris of 1871, The Drunken Boat and the last verses. Rimbaud’s search for a new poetic language runs alongside his stormy bond with Paul Verlaine. Across these changing forms, familiar patterns give way to strange, burning pieces that ask you to read with every sense alert.
What you’ll discover
- A schoolboy finds his voice Meet the brilliant pupil from Charleville as his early sonnets begin a restless poetic journey.
- Anger without polite restraint Explore rough, rebellious poems shaped by a France facing war, defeat and the Paris Commune.
- The poet as seer Encounter Rimbaud’s desire to unsettle the senses and push poetry beyond its familiar limits.
- The Drunken Boat Enter the sea of images in the poem that draws Verlaine’s attention to Rimbaud.
- Rhyme gives way Follow the movement toward last verses where rules loosen and the poem seems to catch fire.
Who will love it
For readers who love poems that surprise them, anyone curious about how modern poetry began, and those drawn to young, restless genius.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A schoolboy in Charleville finds his voice
- Anger, mockery and the Paris of 1871
- The poet must become a seer
- The Drunken Boat and the sea of images
- Verlaine, the last verses and the end of rhyme
- Silence, Africa and why the poems last
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Complete Poems
A teenage rebel breaks rhyme and meter, turning poetry into a path toward the unknown.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Arthur Rimbaud wrote almost all of his poetry between the ages of about fifteen and twenty. He was born in 1854 in Charleville, a small town in northeastern France, and he gave up writing before he turned twenty-one.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A schoolboy in Charleville finds his voice
Rimbaud grew up in Charleville with his mother and siblings, after his father, an army officer, left the family. He was a brilliant pupil, and his teacher Georges Izambard encouraged his reading. At fifteen he was already writing Latin verse and French poems that showed a strong ear. His earliest poems are often built in the old forms, with regular lines and rhyme.
The best known of these early pieces are small, vivid and sensual. Sensation is a short poem about walking through summer fields, free and without a destination. Ophelia takes the drowned girl from Shakespeare's Hamlet and floats her down a river in a long, pictorial scene. Both poems show a young writer who already sees the world in sharp color and motion.
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What are the best known poems by Arthur Rimbaud?
The most often read are The Drunken Boat, Vowels, The Sleeper in the Valley, Sensation, Ophelia and My Bohemian Life. Many readers also know his prose works, A Season in Hell and Illuminations.
Why did Rimbaud stop writing poetry?
No one knows for certain. He stopped around the age of twenty-one, after A Season in Hell and the end of his bond with Verlaine, and spent his later life traveling and trading in Africa and Arabia.
What did Rimbaud mean by the poet as a seer?
In his 1871 letters he argued that a poet must reach the unknown by deliberately unsettling the senses. The poet then brings back new images and new forms, rather than just describing ordinary feelings.
The author
Arthur Rimbaud
1854–1891 · French poet
Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet born in Charleville, France, in 1854. He wrote most of his poetry as a teenager, including A Season in Hell in 1873. He lived in London with Paul Verlaine and later worked as a trader in Aden and Ethiopia. He died in Marseille in 1891.
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