Decadent Poetry

by Lisa Rodensky (Editor)

The poems collected in this volume are exquisite and languorous expressions of a spirit of self-indulgence, eroticism and moral rebelliousness that emerged in the late Victorian age. They deal with eternal themes of transition, artifice and, above all, the cruel ravages of time - often depicting flowers, with their heady, perfumed beauty, as the embodiment of decay and desire. Decadent Poetry brings together the works of many fascinating writers - Oscar Wilde on tainted love and the torments of the human spirit, Arthur Symons on an absinthe-induced stupor and the mysteries of the night, Rosamund Marriott Watson on disenchantment and memory, W. B. Yeats on waning passion and faded beauty, Ernest Dowson on lust and despair and Lord Alfred Douglas on shame and secret love, among many others of this exhilarating poetic movement.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Victorian, English Literature

208 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 2007

Reviews

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yeah yeah, you were all swimming nude in a sensual lake of absinthe then toweling yourselves off with olde verse formats, but let me tell you, the results ain't pretty:

The sky is up above the roof
So blue, so soft!
A tree there, up above the roof,
Swayeth aloft.

A bell within that sky we see,
Chimes low and faint:
A bird upon that tree we see
Maketh complaint.

Etc. etc. just awful! Those are the first two stanzas of an Ernest Dowson poem decadently entitled "After Paul Verlaine IV"

And to add insult to sensual perfumèd injury, there are some very bad early Yeats poems included here too. Apparently he was "decadent" as a youth:

When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wove with silken thread...

I mean really, did they scrape that poem out of Yeats's septic tank decades after he flushed it?

Max Beerbohm's poems here are pretty decent though.

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice theme collection, some really bad verse but some worthwhile lesser-known poets like Rosamund Marriott Watson that I wasn't familiar with.

[Lizzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve read as much as I’m going to. Most of it wasn’t really my cup of tea. Naidu’s work was interesting, and I liked discussing Field in class. But overall...meh.

[Ayesha the Great 🍉 (Barbie's Version)]

When I saw the sad little copy of this book tucked in a corner of a shelf that was itself tucked in the darkest, emptiest corner of the book shop I knew I had to get it. Wilde and the hedonistic poetry were just brownie points; this was purchased purely due to the vibes I felt at the time.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indespensable, compact, cheap. What more could one want.

[Itch Iseatingnandos · Rating 3 out of 5]

I somewhat enjoyed this collection, a few greats poems and a few duds. It backs my claim that decadence doesn't equal creativity but it's a nice throw back to when poets were rock stars

[Samantha Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent selection of poetry but thematically incredibly redundant. Layout and framing of poems could have been done exponentially better. Did find some new good ones though.

[Ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

lavish victorian era prose, sultry and risque