A Season in Hell

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 nineteen, quit poetry altogether. New Directions's edition was among the first to be published in the U.S., and it quickly became a classic. Rimbaud's famous poem "The Drunken Boat" was subsequently added to the first paperbook printing. 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 a introduction by another famous rebel -- and now National Book Award-winner -- Patti Smith.