Rimbaud and Ginsberg

Rimbaud and Ginsberg as Modern Poets Anyone who has read a fair sampling of modernist poetry or studied some representative visionary poets has found the experience something of a revelation. Immediately exhilarating for some, initially intimidating for others and, for all of us, a profound departure from traditional literature. According to Rimbaud, for a poet to be absolutely modern he must become a visionary and "a poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless …

…example of this, for me personally, was reading the "Sunflower Sutra". I will never see a sunflower without thinking of this poem and the way in which Ginsberg gives the object of his affection such everlasting life. The modernist poets from Rimbaud to Ginsberg and beyond give artistic license to all writers to test the boundaries of their senses and unabashedly give account of their personal experience of the beauty that surrounds each of us.