Mark Desrosiers's review of Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu
Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu (Penguin Classics) by Lisa Rodensky
Yeah yeah, you were all swimming nude in a sensual lake of absinthe then toweling yourselves off with olde verse formats, but let me tell you, the results ain't pretty:
The sky is up above the roof
So blue, so soft!
A tree there, up above the roof,
Swayeth aloft.
A bell within that sky we see,
Chimes low and faint:
A bird upon that tree we see
Maketh complaint.
Etc. etc. just awful! Those are the first two stanzas of an Ernest Dowson poem decadently entitled "After Paul Verlaine IV"
And to add insult to sensual perfumèd injury, there are some very bad early Yeats poems included here too. Apparently he was "decadent" as a youth:
When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wove with silken thread...
...more
The sky is up above the roof
So blue, so soft!
A tree there, up above the roof,
Swayeth aloft.
A bell within that sky we see,
Chimes low and faint:
A bird upon that tree we see
Maketh complaint.
Etc. etc. just awful! Those are the first two stanzas of an Ernest Dowson poem decadently entitled "After Paul Verlaine IV"
And to add insult to sensual perfumèd injury, there are some very bad early Yeats poems included here too. Apparently he was "decadent" as a youth:
When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wove with silken thread...
...more
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