RIMBAUD, Arthur

Running away from home, the teenage Rimbaud befriended Paul Verlaine (1844–96), who left his wife to live and travel with Rimbaud, until the older man shot the younger. That prompted Rimbaud to write Une Saison en enfer (1873, A Season in Hell), which consists mostly of prose poems filled with extreme imagery. Rimbaud's other important prose poem, Illuminations, also composed before 1874, introduces his theory of the poet as seer, thereby influencing poetic practice well into the twentieth century...