Description
A reissue of Rimbaud’s highly influential work, with a new preface by Patti Smith and the original 1945 New Directions cover design by Alvin lustig.
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.
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.
Reviews
"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
Also By: Arthur Rimbaud 
Illuminations: Prose poems
Paperback, 1957
The definitive translation of the one of the brightest geniuses of French poetry.
Illuminations: Prose poems
E Book, 2015
The definitive translation of the one of the brightest geniuses of French poetry.
Illuminations
Paperback, 2012
"This may be the most beautiful book in the world, lighted from within and somehow embodying all forms of literature." —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
Illuminations
Slipcased And Numbered Limited Edition, Hardback, 2011
"If we are absolutely modern—and we are—it's because Rimbaud commanded us to be." —John Ashbery, from the preface
Also By: Patti Smith
Woolgathering
Paperback, 2021
An ode to childhood and to “woolgathering” as the wellspring for a creative life—now in an expanded paperback edition
The Divorce
Paperback, 2021
With a preface by the irrepressible Patti Smith, The Divorce is a delightful book of several short amazing stories of chance meetings, bizarre circumstances, and even stranger visions of alternate...
The Divorce
E Book, 2021
With a preface by the irrepressible Patti Smith, The Divorce is a delightful book of several short amazing stories of chance meetings, bizarre circumstances, and even stranger visions of alternate...
The Coral Sea
Paperback, 2012
Before the National Book Award-winning Just Kids, Patti Smith addressed the life and passing of her intimate friend, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
Woolgathering
Hardback, 2011
The National Book Award–winner Patti Smith presents a treasure box of a childhood memoir about “clear unspeakable joy” and “just the wish to know.”
Also By: Louise Varèse
Paris Spleen
E Book, 2013
One of the founding texts of literary modernism.
Varèse: A Looking-Glass Diary
Paperback, 1972
Paris Spleen
Paperback, 1970
One of the founding texts of literary modernism.
