To Baudelaire

[tectak]

Drown me in thy wine, Baudelaire!
We will drink to the Spleen and the Ideal!
We will drink to our evils,
to our unquenched desires
which push us ever forward towards new girls, Period. You have made a sentence
We will drink to old knighthoods, Baudelaire,
To dead chivalry and to Sappho's ghost
We will drink to the good death, and the good evil,
And the Architect! And we will drink I give up. Calm down. This is Sappho on steroids. You make much of little and then seem to hide what you really want to say...and what's wrong with lesbians except in this poem? Over intellectualising can detract by substitution. The obscurity is academic posturing...you ARE writing a poem are you not?
to all soured lesbians and sex workers
of old Paris, of old gaslamps, of old bottles of wine. Now that Baudelaire has been name-dropped and game-dropped we can enjoy the poetry of Laura. So...the meter is like falling logs, the punctuation is enebriated, the repetition...hmmmm... not always a "bad" thing, but in this terse verse a little OTT , perhaps. For me, you didn't need to drag Baudelaire into it. Just write about how wonderful lesbians, lushes and old lamps are.
Best,
tectak

Hi laura,
Rollicking though this is I am concerned in a small way that you rely too heavily upon l'actualité of Baudelaire and his concession to the free life style...that is, you use too much of what Baudelaire had, and not enough of what you would wish us to believe is of you. Yes, I have read Baudelaire, and as a spirit of the age he blew gustily but failed to emerge as a force nine storm...during his lifetime...exactly what you are doing in this terse (too terse) tribute. I can imagine french academics reading Poe translated and praising Baudelaire.
Enough translational stuff. I get the spleen, the ideal and the Architect. Probably three out of ten but you had a lot to choose from...so to the poetry.
Well, first of all...who wrote it? I don't mean plagiarism, but I note in your crit that you assume a good deal about the writer(s). I end with a question. Have you read Baudelaire?