Journal
THE KING OF POETS
Charles Baudelaire found beauty in the crowded streets of Paris, in erotic obsession and intoxication, boredom and decay, discovering the raw materials of a new literature capable of expressing modern life. His poetry would profoundly influence generations of writers, while his celebrated translations of Edgar Allan Poe helped shape the literary culture from which Symbolism would emerge. The explosion of literary forms that followed owed him much, for he was, as Arthur Rimbaud would note, “the first seer, the king of poets, a true God.”