on this book:

It is somewhat difficult or rather impossible to give a 'characteristic' selection of Rimbaud's poetry - it underwent considerable changes in style, contents and objectives. His first poems still follow traditional French forms, whereas he later abandoned any formal rules, and eventually composed poetry in prose.

Rimbaud's poetry is raw like an open wound, rich with painted images, angst, and an honesty that breathed life into the times in which he lived. He denounced the typical subject matter, the meter and the monotony, of the lifeless work that was saturating the very fabric of the literary world.

Rimbaud wrote abrasively satirical, sarcastic poems attacking the mindless and petty values and customs of the bourgeoisie. His poems constitute a portrait gallery of bloated `bons bourgeois' too self-satisfied to question their own lives. In the poem A la musique, Rimbaud takes the ritual of a Sunday afternoon musical concert to expose the phoney conventionality and concern for order of the bourgeois of Charleville, the town where lived:'Sur la place taillée en mesquines pelouses,
Square où tout est correct, les arbres et les fleurs,
Tous les bourgeois poussifs qu'étranglent les chaleurs
Portent, les jeudis soirs, leurs bêtises jalouses.'('On the square pruned into shabby plots of grass
The square where all is proper, trees and flowers
All the wheezy bourgeois choking with the heat
Bring their stupid jealousies each Thursday evening.')A similar attack on the complacent middle-classes of Charleville, hostile to Rimbaud's aspirations is found in Les Assis. In Les Effarés and Les Douaniers the object of his attacks are petty-minded and faceless bureaucrats. His attacks on the bourgeoisie become more serious and more virulent after the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune as in Les Mains de Jeanne-Marie and Chant de guerre parisien. Poems like Rages de César and L'Orgie parisienne offer a critique of the corruption of the established political order.

Many of Rimbaud's poems are fiercely anti-Christian. He bitterly resented the established church which seemed more interested in wealth than welfare. In Les Pauvres à l'église Rimbaud describes a group of poor people in church, who, despite their humiliation are happy. The poem is an attack on the oppressive nature of church authority, the image of God is a feudal and capitalist one. Christianity is complicit with the dominant political and economic order, fostering the value of passivity. Moreover Rimbaud resented Christianity's denial of the sensual. This is particularly noticeable in the poem Soleil et chair which has the following invocation to Venus, the Pagan goddess of love: 'Je crois en toi! je crois en toi! Divine mère/Aphrodité marine! - Oh! la route est amère/Depuis que l'autre Dieu nous attelle à sa croix'. This theme is explored from a feminist perspective in Les premières communions which attacks Christianity's denial of female sexuality and its insistence on chastity.