The Drunken Boat

“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

Born in northeastern France, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) is widely considered the quintessential French poet. His escape at age sixteen to join the Paris Commune and his tumultuous affair with Paul Verlaine (culminating in a gunshot wound in a Brussels hotel) are the stuff of literary legend. His writings and actions over a mere five yearsrevolutionized attitudes toward art, life, and sexuality. Rimbaud abandoned poetry at the age of twenty, and in his final decade he struggled to find success as a trader and gun-runner in Africa. He died of cancer at thirty-seven, having seen almost none of his work in print.

Mark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, Andre Breton, and Raymond Roussel. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and the author of eleven books, including Revolution of the Mind- The Life of Andre Breton, Highway 61 Revisited, and Sympathy for the Traitor- A Translation Manifesto. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, The Nation, Parnassus, Bookforum, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.