Description

New Directions is pleased to announce the relaunch of the long-celebrated bilingual edition of Rimbaud’s A Season In Hell & The Drunken Boat – a personal poem of damnation as well as a plea to be released from “the examination of his own depths.”

Rimbaud originally distributed A Season In Hell to friends as a self-published booklet, and soon afterward, at the age of nineteen, quit poetry altogether. New Directions’s edition was among the first to be published in the U.S., and it quickly became a classic. Rimbaud’s famous poem “The Drunken Boat” was subsequently added to the first paperbook printing. Allen Ginsberg proclaimed Arthur Rimbaud as “the first punk” – a visionary mentor to the Beats for both his recklessness and his fiery poetry.

This new edition proudly dons the original Alvin Lustig-designed cover, and a introduction by another famous rebel – and now National Book Award-winner – Patti Smith.

Publisher Review

“Every writer produces some haunting passages, some memorable phrases, but with Rimbaud they are strewn all over the pages like gems tumbled from a rifled chest.” — Henry Miller “Rimbaud transformed French poetry, completely modernized it.” — Allen Ginsberg “Our greatest poet of revolt.” — Albert Camus