![]() ![]() They stick out so sharp and sublime against the dull poems that one regularly encounter that I have the feeling of being reborn when I read it. I have grown fond of reading his outlandish poems. ![]() If poetry can be a wonderful tool to render exceptional or extreme experiences, then the hallucinating poems of Henri Michaux will top that list. Whether in poetry or prose, his weird visions seem to emerge as messages from his inner space. He has authored more than 30 books of poems, prose poems, essays, journals, and drawings. In 1948, Michaux's wife died after accidentally setting fire to her nightgown: devastated, he began to take mescaline, a hallucinating drug, painstakingly recording his experiences in prose-poems accompanied by distinctive calligraphic line drawings. He finally settled in Paris, where he began to write and paint. ![]() His voyages inspired two travelogues on Ecuador and Asia. A painter as well as poet, he travelled widely in Africa and Asia and also supported himself in Paris as a teacher and secretary. He contemplated entering the priesthood then enrolled in medical school before abandoning his studies and becoming a merchant seaman. He was educated at a Jesuit school in Brussels. Simplicity: The Prose Poems of Henri Michauxīorn in Belgium in 1899, Henri Michaux (1899-1984) defies common critical definition. ![]()
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