Charles Baudelaire, _Le Spleen de Paris: Petits Poèmes en Prose_

 I HAD READ a large handful of these in anthologies, but had never read the whole book through--the flight to Paris seemed a good opportunity.

Are they great? Well, yes. You knew that. "Any where out of the world" remains a particular favorite.

They seem important, too, in their implicit cancellation of the idea that poetry is purely and simply verse. If poetry is not purely and simply verse, what is it? Baudelaire's preface/dedication emphasizes aspects of the language: "musicale sans rythme et sans rhyme, assez souple and assez heurtée pour s'adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l'âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, de la conscience." [my translation: "musical without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and abrupt enough to adapt itself to the movements of the soul, to the undulations of reverie, of consciousness."] Is it a discourse's ability to respond to or model the lability of our interiority that makes it poetry? 

Perhaps also its ability to respond to or model the lability of urban life, as Baudelaire goes on to say: "C'est surtout de la fréquentation des villes enormes, c'est du croisements de leur innombrables rapports que naît cet idéal obsédant." ["It is above all living in large cities, it is the intersections of their countless communications, that gave birth to this artistic obsession."] I'm guessing Baudelaire's example was crucial as Eliot made his way towards an English poetic of the city.

Some of the pieces herein, appearing today, might be called "flash fiction" or "lyrical essays," which goes to show how what an immense legacy Baudelaire has. We continue to ask what poetry is if it is not verse, and the attempts at answers continue to be generative.