Zanzibar: Selected Poems & Letters of Arthur Rimbaud | Mark Irwin

Description

Zanzibar: Selected Poems & Letters of Arthur Rimbaud, Mark Irwin

$28.00

ISBN: 978-1-968274-09-2

Fine Softcover; 150+ pages; 5.25”x7.5”

Publication Date: September 22, 2026

Summary

Mark Irwin’s new translations capture Arthur Rimbaud’s revolutionary genius — a poet who wrote masterworks between ages sixteen and nineteen before abandoning literature for a nomadic life across Africa. This volume pairs iconic poems like “The Drunken Boat” and selections from Illuminations with letters that trace Rimbaud’s restless journeys from the Parisian avant-garde to the deserts of Ethiopia. Irwin reimagines Rimbaud’s untranslatable voice through careful reidiomization, transforming antiquated “lyres” into “guitar’s held chord,” honoring Rimbaud’s synesthetic brilliance and metaphysical urgency. With an afterword by renowned scholar Alain Borer, Zanzibar reveals the poet’s radical vision of the “missing elsewhere” — that pregnant possibility driving his quest to be “absolutely modern.”

Author

Mark Irwin is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, which include Once When Green (2025), Joyful Orphan (2023), Shimmer (2020), American Urn: Selected Poems (1987-2014), Large White House Speaking (2013), Tall If (2008), Bright Hunger (2004), White City (2000), Quick, Now, Always (1996), and Against the Meanwhile: Three Elegies (1988). He has also translated Philippe Denis’ Notebook of Shadows, Nichita Stănescu’s Ask the Circle to Forgive You: Selected Poems, and Zanzibar: Selected Poems and Letters of Arthur Rimbaud (forthcoming with Alain Borer). His collection of essays, Monster: Distortion, Abstraction, and Originality in Contemporary American Poetry, was published in 2017. His poetry and essays have appeared in many literary magazines, including The American Poetry Review, Agni Review, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, Georgia Review, Harper’s, The Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Pleiades, Poetry, The Nation, New England Review, New American Writing, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Southern Review, and Tin House. Recognition for his work includes The Nation/Discovery Award, four Pushcart Prizes, two Colorado Book Awards, the James Wright Poetry Award, the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, The Juniper Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright, Lilly, and Wurlitzer Foundations. A professor in the PhD in Creative Writing & Literature Program at the University of Southern California, he lives in Los Angeles and the mountains outside Salida, Colorado. His poetry has been translated into several languages.