Patrick Wang’s latest feature, A. Rimbaud, is currently playing at the Roxy Cinema in New York City. His first film, In the Family, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and hailed as “an indie masterpiece” by Roger Ebert. His second film, The Grief of Others, premiered at SXSW and Cannes, and the making of the movie is documented in the interactive book Post Script. His third film, the duology A Bread Factory, was released theatrically in 2018 to universal acclaim. (Photo by Mariane Asseily.)
In our film, you feel the loneliness of Rimbaud. He reached but a sliver of his audience in his lifetime. As another writer once joked, “I am at odds with the present, but eternity loves me.” Much of that eternal love for Rimbaud has poured forth from songwriters. Here is a little invocation of a poem, summoning a sample of these musicians and their musings on Rimbaud.
A. Rimbaud runs through it
Amidst the Patti Smiths
Clashing against the cliffs of Dylan
Go going through the valley of 1975
Under the eye of the Van Morrison moon,
overflowing dum dum dreams beneath the mystic.
Tides arise again as if Easter.
Communing with the vernal pool that is Vitalie,
the firth called Frederic, inlet of Isabelle.
Members of the blue bolt band,
they fall into the flow till one rill made lonesome goes …
…is wild Welsh water, dragging along dangerous dogs
…is whipping languid and lame coasts of Verlaine
Absinthe eyes spilled wide
as Istanbul and Galveston,
he’s known every estuary’s sun.
Ambassador of dreams to suburban bayous where just kids
could dip in Rimbaud
could sit a while with Rimbaud
could drink boatloads of Rimbaud
as the rippling refrain of Rimbaud and Verlaine
of Rimbaud
runs on
carrying Rimbaud burdens
to new Floridas
with new tides
creating new divides
between the wheat
and the rats
Playlist
Bob Dylan, You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
Patti Smith, Land: Horses / Land of a Thousand Dances / La Mer(de)
The Clash, Ghetto Defendant
The 1975, Part of the Band
Pony Bradshaw, Van Gogh
Patti Smith, Easter
Allman Brown, Just Kids (Patti & Robert)
Van Morrison, Foreign Window
Don Henley, Drivin’ With Your Eyes Closed
Dum Dum Girls, Rimbaud Eyes
Ron Hawkins, Crackstatic
Van Morrison, For Mr. Thomas
Eric Andersen, Dream to Rimbaud
No Rome, Rimbaud, Come and Sit For A While
Van Morrison, Tore Down a la Rimbaud
Patti Smith, Radio Ethiopia
Featured image shows Blake Draper as Arthur Rimbaud in Patrick Wang’s A. Rimbaud; all images courtesy Patrick Wang.
