Stephen Dobyns: Baudelaire (January 2012)

Stephen Dobyns provides an introduction to the life, poetic project, and influence of Charles Baudelaire, often called the first modern poet. Drawing on biographical material as well as some of the poet’s essays, Dobyns offers close readings of poems from The Flowers of Evil, tracing in them an inherent tension between passionate love and the spiritual life, as well as early and influential gestures of Symbolism.