A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat

This is a reissue of Rimbaud’s highly influential work with a new preface by Patti Smith and the original 1945 New Directions cover design by Alvin Lustig. New Directions is pleased to announce the relaunch of the long-celebrated bilingual edition of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat, a personal poem of damnation, as well as, a plea to be released from “the examination of his own depths”. Rimbaud originally distributed A Season in Hell to friends as a self-published booklet, and soon afterward, at the age of 19, quit poetry altogether. This edition was among the first to be published in the US, and quickly became a classic, and Rimbaud’s famous poem “The Drunken Boat” was subsequently added. Allen Ginsberg proclaimed Arthur Rimbaud as “the first punk”, a visionary mentor to the Beats for both his recklessness and his fiery poetry. This new edition proudly dons the original Alvin Lustig-designed cover, and an introduction by another famous rebel, and now National Book Award