Edward Lacie (edwa318@webtv.net)
Prognostication is a tricky business I don't wish to venture into. In (year) Henry Miller predicted, "there will be many Rimbauds". Rather than predict, here, that poet Greg Baysans will be regarded in the future as a poet worth reading, I will instead claim that Miller's prediction has come true - there are many Rimbauds among us, and Baysans is one.
Like Rimbaud abandoning poetry, Baysans has abandoned publication of his poetry since appearing in the JWR, a publication he co-founded in 1983. Since 1990, his work has appeared only on a personal website.
Like Rimbaud questioning form in poetry and inspiring, some say, free verse, Baysans has invented forms able to be further explored by future poets and generations.
An endearing quality of Rimbaud has long been his rebellion against an "establishment". Baysans is anxious to poke sticks at such an institution as a school and the government's rush to war.
After abandoning his youthful dream of becoming a writer, Rimbaud tried his hand at various business ventures in foreign countries, ultimately living in the African interior he was the first European to visit. Baysans, after abandoning the JWR in 1991, ventured into the jungle of the modern working world with its corporate and global mindset.
Rimbaud's only post-poetry writing was a report on that part of interior Africa he explored. Since his poetry has appeared in publication, Baysans has written bitterly of the jungle that is today's work-place ("Ten Months After").
Rimbaud closed the doors on his literary youth and considered that time folly, those who knew him in his later years would say. Most, if not all, had no knowledge he had been a writer of any kind. His major works were published without his knowledge and his reputation grew only once he was presumed dead. It grew even more after he actually was dead.
Baysans reopened doors closed for a decade when he began, around 2000, to document his experiences in the modern work-place ("Finesse, An Anti-Poem"). Culminating in the large-scale "A Real Education," Baysans is eager to expose frauds in their own mirrors.
Holds a mirror up to "the real world" and shows it some warts....? Hm, I need to condense the above into a new intro at least and then attach it so the body of "New Rimbaud" essay.
Click here to rejoin the original draft of "Out of Africa Redux" or "The New Rimbaud"
-Edward Lacie, 12/31/2002