Reading Baudelaire

Writing out these lines returns me to many places. To pursuing “The Landscape” while taking the N out of Paris, past the landscapes of greater metropolitan Versailles, where I began reviewing Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens from Les Fleurs du Mal. I walk from the train station to the palace, peering into a used bookstore along the way but relying on the wealth of open access poetry just a quick google search away.

Now I’m under the scorching sun outside of that famous gilded gate, waiting in a line that stretches to an hour and a half, reading about the Paris sun in “Le Soleil.” Now I will forever associate Baudelaire with that summer trip to Versailles and the hunt for a perfect garden shot to match the lines in “Landscape.”

I am back at the hotel, quietly settled on the chaise lounge, discovering Will Schniz’s translation of “The Swan,” which meticulously captures the concrete reflections on Haussmannization that are so key to why Baudelaire is an important poet. I scribble these lines and others down knowing somehow they will be important for the opening of the maison.

Now I’m sitting on a stone bench in the shade at the Louvre. It’s scorching again. I don’t want to burn and there is a great view of the crowd that gathers there. I read “The Crowd.” Now all of these stolen moments where I skimmed a poem have created spatial associations with the texts that make up the Tableau Parisiens, and if I want to return to a time and place I read one of these poems and I am returned to those memories.

Poetry is a genre I have never studied or incorporated into my research, though Baudelaire is unavoidable for urban humanists. In some ways it is strange for me to launch with a poetry recommendation. My own experience with poetry is rarely one of pleasure. When I sit down to read it is for hours at a time, often to lose myself in what I read, submerging into another world where I cannot live, but I can drift for a time.

Poetry has to be read slowly, savored and appreciated for its abstraction and my tendency has always been to binge read and rush through it as though it were a suspense novel. But more and more I find myself with these unfilled moments in a line, on the subway platform, waiting for my husband, who needs to try that takoyaki from a food truck. These are the moments for a poem, a moment to slow down and contemplate even as time is limited and it will only be possible to read one.

A poem should be understood in the context of its volume, but like a glass of wine it should be savored individually. There is no reward in speedily emptying the bottle. So the next time the line at the grocery store is long or you’re waiting for a friend, partner, child, sprinkle these poems throughout those moments and disappear to the streets of Paris in the 1850s. Savor a line or two. Linger over those carefully selected line breaks asking yourself what the effect is. Close your eyes and imagine Paris on a winter night and swans walking the city streets. Inhabit the poem and use it to break up the monotony of daily life, to transport yourself not only to another city, but to another time, and to another mind. This is how I prefer to read poetry.

Tell me how you read poetry and if you do. What is your experience with it? Joyous? Frustrating? Where and how do you read it and how does this impact your engagement with it?