Rimbaud called Charles Baudelaire ''le premier voyant, roi des poetes, un vrai dieu''. The history of modern poetry begins with him. This is a comprehensive translation of all Baudelaire''s poetry, excluding only juvenilia, occasional verse and work of doubtful attribution. Baudelaire contemplated a volume of poems that would ''launch him into the future like a cannon-ball''. Here it is in vivid and formally authoritative translation.