Epilogue

Abstract

AbstractThis closing chapter looks at the prose poem in the nineteenth century, after Baudelaire, through a few brief textual analyses that shed light on the early years of Baudelaire’s enduring influence. It specifically considers the link between the posthumous publication of Baudelaire’s prose poems and Arthur Rimbaud’s poetic innovations, in which Rimbaud’s formal innovations push far beyond Baudelaire’s prose poetry. This Epilogue also poses a new question about the very role of poetry: as an essential manner of negotiating a modern world in a way which defies linearity, and any kind of clear delimitation between prose writing and poetry as distinct forms. The relationship between form and modernity is more intricately linked than before in Rimbaud’s poetry, and the poetic enterprise remains as essential as ever.