Great Regulars: To be sure, the verset is not the form

of Baudelaire's poetry, and while Baudelaire was among the first to pen a modern prose-poem, none was included in Les Fleurs du Mal. And yet, looking at some of Waldrop's phrasing in The Flowers of Evil, we can quickly move past such a summary judgment. Consider a stanza (or paragraph) from "The Possessed":

I like you that way! Still, if today you prefer, like an eclipsed star coming out of the penumbra, to strut the places Madness stocks, all right! Charming dagger, sprung from its case!

from Powells: Review-A-Day: The Flowers of Evil (Wesleyan Poetry) by Charles Baudelaire

~~~~~~~~~~~