Wedded Love vs. Armpit Stench
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Romances sans Paroles (by Verlaine) has a “consistently high standard … and reflects his troubled emotional state over the rupture with his wife and his liaison with Rimbaud. It also shows an awareness of his own originality, an awareness probably brought home [!] to him by the younger poet.” ~ R. C. D. Perman, ed., 13.
“We have the love of tigers.” ~ Paul Verlaine, writing to his wife about his affair with Arthur Rimbaud
Biographers know more than we do, yet,
They miss the mark sometimes the way that Paul
Missed Arthur’s heart when Paul’s crazed bullet met
The bad boy’s wrist. Men’s love, hotly banal,
Is boring as can be except it bangs
Out slugs and semen. Perman says the man
Was in a whacky state of “rupture” pangs
Because his marriage split. That does not scan.
The cause of pain was ruined rapture with
The teenage beast, the tiger who had mauled
His chest and robbed it of its contents. Myth
Is what lovesickness makes. We are appalled
That academics miss the point. They think
That WOMAN matters. They’ve missed the lad’s stink.