Breaking Form: a Poetry and Culture Podcast · Aaron Smith and James Allen Hall

Rimshot

·31 min·2 clips

On July 10th, 1873 in Brussels, Verlaine buys a revolver and shoots Rimbaud in the wrist.

Rimbo is the trapdoor. Valerie Bertinelli gossip seems to be the bit, then suddenly Verlaine and Rimbaud are on the table, with 1871 already looking messy. The joke gets there first. After that, the episode treats literary history as sweaty, impulsive, overnamed, and still ridiculous enough to be reached through pop culture nonsense. Aaron and James keep the pace up. They pitch the show as queer life, art, games, poems, gossip, shade, laughter, and a useful warning that nobody here plans to please everyone. That warning does some work. High poetry keeps getting dragged down to the table, where Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud have to sit beside celebrity chatter and eye-rolls. Nobody embalms the poets. Rimbaud is seventeen, Verlaine is established, the affair begins in September 1871, and the details come with awe, side-eye, and a little disbelief. Then the game hits. A question about who should take a break from writing becomes a sharp, silly complaint about men, safety, and literary entitlement. The knives are butter knives, but they still cut. Even David Duchovny needing to know enjambment is a real craft gripe in a camp costume. The poem-world irritation turns personal without getting solemn. The episode can make exaggerated punishment feel like stage business while still keeping the actual annoyance in view: writers, especially men, often take up space and skate past consequence. Passion does not get a free pass. When Rimbaud and Verlaine come back, the old passionate-poet myth sounds thrilling, dangerous, and maybe useless for ordinary responsibility. Poets still cannot answer email. By the end, the age gap, Rimbaud dying at thirty-seven, and Verlaine's fatal straightness leave the history bruised, funny, and weirdly tender.

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