Weekend links

• “To sustain the legend, one has to be unaware of these decisive letters,” Camus wrote of Arthur Rimbaud’s letters home after abandoning France and poetry. “They are sacrilege, as the truth sometimes is.” Rimbaud is compelling because he wrote great poetry, not because he composed it all before the age of 21. Dismissing his adolescent hobby, he spent the rest of his life as a traveling merchant in the Middle East and Africa. But it is best not to glamorize Rimbaud’s remaining years as mysterious or exotic. As a businessman, the poet was overwhelmed with tedium, writing home at the age of 34: “I’m always very bored; in fact I’ve never known anyone be more bored than I am.” Although it does not illuminate his poetry any more, it is nonetheless exciting that two French booksellers have discovered in a flea market the only clear photograph of Rimbaud as an adult. If you haven’t read any Rimbaud, start with the Mason edition.
• Seth Abramson writes in defense of the MFA.
• Korean author Ko Un has finished Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives), his 30-volume epic poem. Green Integer released a selection from the first third in 2005.
• Salon and McSweeney’s have launched a content partnership, starting with a piece by Elif Batuman. For years, McSweeney’s ran an entertaining sestina contest. Batuman wrote The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, an enjoyable book on Russian literature. She spoke at McNally Jackson Books last month and put on a great time for all of us in the audience.
• Eileen Battersby investigates the state of Irish writing, wondering “Do Irish writers engage with contemporary life or are they stuck in the past?”

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