John Porter Houston strays from the usual in this wonderfully written book. Most other authors deal only with the poets lives and works in a trivial and banal manner, treating the poets as precocious and intoxicated. It is refreshing to finally find a book that reviews their legacies in terms of cultural and philosophical currents in a diverse and lucid manner. Included are reviews of selections of their work with the original french and the authors own intelligent translations. I highly recomend this book to any serious student of either Rimbaud or Mallarme as one of the few available which is both entertaining and thought provoking.