Skip to product information
1 of 1

The Drunken Boat

The Drunken Boat

Selected Writings

by Arthur Rimbaud, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti

Regular price $18.00
Regular price Sale price $18.00
Format

Poet, prodigy, precursor, punk: the short, precocious, uncompromisingly rebellious career of the poet Arthur Rimbaud is one of the legends of modern literature. By the time he was twenty, Rimbaud had written a series of poems that are not only masterpieces in themselves but that forever transformed the idea of what poetry is. Without him, surrealism is inconceivable, and his influence is palpable in artists as diverse as Henry Miller, John Ashbery, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith. In this essential volume, renowned translator Mark Polizzotti offers authoritative and inspired new versions of Rimbaud’s major poems and letters, including generous selection of Illuminations and the entirety of his lacerating confession A Season in Hell—capturing as never before not only the meaning but also the daredevil attitudes and incantatory rhythms that make Rimbaud’s works among the most perpetually modern of his or any other generation.   The Drunken Boat is a bilingual edition.

On July 28, 2022, translator Mark Polizzotti discussed The Drunken Boat with scholar and translator Chris Clarke. This virtual event is part of New York Review Books’ ongoing series with Brooklyn’s Community Bookstore.

Additional Book Information

Series: NYRB Poets
ISBN: 9781681376509
Pages: 336
Publication Date:

Praise

Polizzotti’s aim, he says, is ‘to provide an approachable, and I hope enjoyable, introduction to Rimbaud’s work’, and this project is a distinct success.
—Michael Wood, London Review of Books

Polizzotti rises to the challenge of this dense prose: his versions are efficient and rhythmically satisfying.
—Stephen Romer, TLS

Mark Polizzotti is, without any doubt, right there with the very best translators of symbolist or any other French poetry, and here he surpasses even himself.
—Mary Ann Caws

View full details
  • Shopping for someone else but not sure what to give them? Give them the gift of choice with a New York Review Books Gift Card.

    Gift Cards 
  • A membership for yourself or as a gift for a special reader will promise a year of good reading.

    Join NYRB Classics Book Club 
  • Is there a book that you’d like to see back in print, or that you think we should consider for one of our series? Let us know!

    Tell us about it