Any reccomendation is personal, but I've read this little book many times and over the years it's remained a favourite. I personally prefer it to "flowers" mainly because of the dark humour. This is a good translation, others that I've bought as presents for friends don't seem so pure for some reason. My favourites in this collection are: the dog and the Scent Bottle,Temptations,The Generous Gambler,Which One is Real? Trink!The Looking Glass... those are the ones that are permenantly marked in the copy I have before me...I love some of the phrasing : "having a crowd-bath," or "melodious cascades"... but why not read it yourself and email me your favourites? The last words belong the man himself: "We should always be drunk. That is the be-all and end-all, the only choice there is. To no longer feel the horrible burden of Time, which racks your shoulders and blows you downwards to the earth, you must make yourself ceaselessly drunk. But drunk on what? Wine, poetry, virtue - whichever you prefer;only, get drunk."

Adorned with a title that sounds like it was borrowed from Enya's last album, Ulrich Baer's derivative pastiche "Remnants of Song" is appallingly preachy and reductive, politically dubious in the extreme, mind-numbingly repetitive, and written in a style that lowers English critical prose to new levels of lumbering inelegance. For something worthwhile on Baudelaire, look at work by Susan Blood, Ross Chambers, Sartre . . . or anyone else, for that matter! "Remnants of Song" raises (lowers?) the bar in the writing-the-disaster department -- my nominee for the 2003 Residual Culture Award.

when i say baudelaire is brought into the light, i mean that his work is described lucidly and criticized empathetically. the author took special pains to understand the conditions in which baudelaire wrote, and sought to bring fresh perspectives to his analyses of the works sited. i agree with another reviewer of this work who commented that his favorite section concerns the sky -- the treatment of the horizon, frames, and clouds is wonderfully clever. as a dancer and choreographer who enjoys using the imagery of poetry i found this to be one of the most helpful discussions of baudelaire's work available to me. i believe this text would be useful not only to students and lovers of poetry, but also to other artists who would like a multi-faceted reading of some very complicated and layered poems. i must confess that i did not read the sections pertaining to celan, because i am specifically focusing my personal research on baudelaire. i cannot speak for the quality of the discussions in the latter half of the book, but i can highly recommend this text to those interested in baudelaire.

In short, this is the best book ever written on Baudelaire and Celan. Baer articulates very complex and subtle ideas, but his prose is clear and inviting. This is for those who are interested in not only these particular poets, but also issues of "memory" and just "poetry" at large. I particulary love the third chapter "Blindness and the Sky" and the fifth chapter "Landscape and Memory." Considering that poetry is on the verge of extinction in our contemporary, it may be urgent to read this book right now.

Mauvais traductions!!!! This is a dual language book with the pléiade text on one side and english verse translations facing. Apearently a large amount of these translations are rather old (1900 England), and repress some of the more blasphemus passages. What is worse is that they are translated in Elizabethian english (Yuck!). I would recommend another translation, but as I dont know of one; all I can say is steer clear of this one, unless you are a English dandy!

THIS IS A FANTASTIC TRANSLATION! AND MY FAVORITE EDITION OF BAUDELAIRE BESIDES THE COMPLETE FLOWERS OF EVIL ALSO FROM NEW DIRECTIONS PUBLISHING.

Flowers of Evil is teeming with imagery that is, at times, lofty, and others, bitter. My favorite edition is the 1955 New Directions Paperbook edition. He was truly a poet who lived and thought rather than the masses who merely muse on living. Read his poetry and step lightly through the flowers.

Prof Carol Clark and Prof Robert Sykes in their 40-page introduction put the English translation of Baudelaire in a cultural perspective. Excellent example of translation studies.

I am a great admierer of the french symbolists, but not when translated by Mr. Crosby. According to the biographical information in the back of the book, Mr. Crosby is qualified to translate the works of Baudelaire because as a medical doctor, his area of experise is the spleen. His experiecne with french, he claimed, came mostly from 2 years of High School study. Theoreticaly this makes me more qualified than he is to translate the works of Baudelaire.

All this you can see in the great liberties he takes with the text, and the innacurate representations he puts forth in many cases.

Aparently, this is all just a hobby for him.

At any rate, I would recomend finding a scholarly translation if you are interested in the real voice of Baudelaire.

I'm not a big fan of Baudelaire's verse poetry to begin with (his prose poetry is a different matter), and having read Flowers of Evil in French, I was not impressed with this translation. It contains most of the important poems from the original (The Albatross, Her Hair, An Invitation to Voyage, To a Malabar Girl, etc.), so this volume is a good introduction for people unfamiliar with Baudelaire. But someone who genuinely wants to study Baudelaire's poetry would be better off reading James McGowan's translation for Oxford World's Classics.