Acts of Renunciation: the poet-essayist as understudy in Paul Stubbs’ The Carbonized Earth
In The Carbonized Earth, poet-essayist Paul Stubbs reaches after Rimbaud’s retreating shadow, uncovering another version of the poet long buried beneath the official discourse. What is new about this version of Rimbaud and what makes Stubbs’ account of the problem of his affinity with it so compelling? The answer has something to do with the writing’s immersion in its task, its affordance of baptismal drenchings, with these essays’ snaking pursuit of the unsayable.
Stephen Sunderland reviews The Carbonized Earth: a study on Arthur Rimbaud by Paul Stubbs.