Flowers of Bad
January 2007
"Perhaps these false translations are the truest of all."
— Allison Elliot
About the Book
Flowers of Bad is David Cameron’s false translation of Charles Baudelaire’s 19th century masterpiece, Les Fleurs du Mal. Developing, revamping, and refurbishing them along the way, Cameron has employed original methods of translation—outlined in detail at the end of the book—evolved from difficulties he has encountered in writing and translation. Rather than trying to build a bridge across the gap that exists between his and Baudelaire’s languages, Cameron descends a rope ladder into the chasm itself.
Published by Unbelievable Alligator; co-published by UDP.
Author
Praise
David Cameron's 'translations' of Baudelaire are actually no such thing. They are poems by David Cameron, brilliant, beautiful, and original. His rejection of literalness in approaching his French material has forced him into fervors of inventiveness where his nutty imagination takes sturdy shape, buttressed perhaps by Baudelaire's structures but creating out of them new worlds that are all his own and now, thankfully, ours too.
— Harry Mathews
David Cameron may very well be the best of the unknown rip-off artists of his generation.
— Jack Spicer
Lovers of this immense, generous and magical text are delighted that
Flowers of Bad will no longer have to be passed hand to hand. Cameron's false translation has drunk of Baudelaire's 'pure et divine liqueur' but, instead of languishing within the hysteria that so sickened the master, these bad flowers fully inhabit 'the mayhem laughing.' Vertiginous as the Coney Island Cyclone and as dazzlingly risky, these micro-tales and imaginal incidents are exploded into being, alchemically, by the means of a mistaken, and pains taken mistranslation. Inspired by Jackson Mac Low's spirit and poetic procedures, the text is modern, and beyond.
Flowers of Bad is, incidentally, funny as hell. And truly an 'Invitation au Voyage.'
— Kimberly Lyons
Excerpt
Something came to me in the garden
The other day. I was out walking, and under my feet: Nature!
It was saying to me: September!
I should have replied: Life and September!
Hermes the thief helps me out,
Always looking over my shoulder.
He gives me the same advice he gave to Midas
Who was the suckiest of all alchemists.
For him I’ve changed gold into iron
And twenty into eleven.
I’ve walked in the fog among barenaked trees
And stumbled across an exquisite corpse,
And there beneath her starry locks
I kissed open her sarcophagus.
Details
ISBN: 978-1-933254-26-5
Publication Date: January 1, 2007
