Book Review: "Selected Poems" by Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a great poet, I think we can all accept that. Recently, in the 'used book shopping' I do, I have had some interesting finds and one of them was this book by Charles Baudelaire with the French and English written on opposite pages. I've often read these types of books with Lorca and even with Neruda (probably because they're a bit more modern than Baudelaire) but, let's investigate exactly how good these selected poems are. Remember, when it comes to an editor selecting poems for an anthology, it's also about the order it's been put together in, not just the poems they've chosen...

I would've liked the book to open with the poem The Albatross as there's definitely an extended metaphor about being a poet in there. But it instead opens with a preface and another couple of poems which I feel do a lot of explaining, but don't quite throw you into the writing. It doesn't feel as confrontational as The Albatross but then again, I'm not the editor. The Albatross might be a short poem, but it definitely does the job of looking at a writer as we might see the bird with giant wings. We get the story of the albatross following a ship, we then get the strange metaphor at the end. Baudelaire uses incredibly atmospheric images, as we already know he does, but this poem is something else entirely apart from that. It is both soothing and confrontational. It soothes us into the submission of wanting to see where the poem goes, but it confronts us with some truths about poets and their duty and stories.

Another poem I enjoyed was called Posthumous Regret which yes, is a dark title but I can't say I don't enjoy darker, more philosophically deep poetry. The poet is speaking to someone and that's the first thing we understand - he isn't talking to us but it definitely feels like it. He talks about the receiver's tomb with images of the heart no longer beating and the feet no longer moving. It's clear that whatever conversation he is having it is one that deals with the regrets before death that we cannot possibly take with us. But from this image, he tells us of how the graves understand poets and I know, usually this image is the other way around but I can't help myself - I must have read this line about four times and I can't see why this is in brackets: (Graves understand the poet's vision). But above all of this, we finish on the image of worms eating the body - a line that probably reminded me more of Hamlet than I would care to admit.

One of the other poems I found quite interesting was titled The Ghost in which Baudelaire begins by giving us some quite short, but visceral imagery of a ghost and how being in love with a ghost-like figure can be something quite atmospheric. I quite like this poem because it basically gives us no context whatsoever, it just gives us the possibility of context. There's two people and they are in love, but the lover will be gone by the morning and the other will be left alone. It all seems very romantic until the very last line which presents a slight tonal change to the piece, almost making it feel gothic and dangerous as opposed to airy. It changes quite quickly but then there's nothing - it keeps the reader hanging on to the possibility. This is why I like Baudelaire's poetry - there's always something that seems a little off and the more you think about it, the more off it feels.

But what would an anthology on Baudelaire be without extracts from the Flowers of Evil? - Well, it wouldn't really be a complete anthology of his work would it? Epigraph for a Condemned Book is definitely underappreciated and well, let's talk about how Baudelaire introduces the entire atmosphere to the reader. There's imagery of curses and darkness, mentions of Satan and death and the poet is asking the reader that if they have not prepared themselves for the book and its horrors then, turn away from it now before going on.

All in all, this was quite an interesting anthology and even though it is one of many Baudelaire anthologies I have enjoyed, this is possibly one of the better ones. So this is your mission of not to skip out on 'selected poetry' books in used bookstores when you see them.