Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Two by Dave Jaffe

        Arthur Rimbaud - Another Troubled Poet


       There were other poets who led troubled lives.
       Arthur Rimbaud was another poet writing prodigy. "Oh come let us seek absinthe's green coloured halls," wrote the young Rimbaud. Absinthe was a green coloured alcoholic drink that was dangerous to the drinker's health. It was later banned by the French government.
     Rimbaud was French and was born in France in 1854. Before the age of 21 he wrote great poetry in his books called 'Illuminations' and 'The Drunken Boat'. Yet Rimbaud who was one of the founders of modern poetry, never wrote another line of poetry after the age of 20.
    He fled Europe and ended up in Abyssinia or present day Ethiopia. Here he became a businessman, Then he went back to his mother's house in France and died there in 1891. He never made it to the age of 40.
     His short life was full of wanderings and some suffering. Poetry certainly didn't save him from a short and troubled existence.