Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Some of us write actual letters to powerful people, hoping against hope to convince them to do the right thing. The formal terms of address are sources for irony: "Your Honor" for the dishonorable; "Your Majesty" for the non-majestic nebbish; "Your Holiness" for the unholy; "Your Eminence" for the fallen; "Your Grace" for the klutz.
I prefer Baudelaire's address to hair: "Ecstatic fleece"; "Take me, tousled current"; "vault of shadows." ("Head of Hair," translated by Richard Howard, Everyman Pocket Library.) Baudelaire's 'terms' are authentic. Outdoing himself, he addresses his lovers: "salutary leech"; "My Queen of Sins"; "Sublime disgrace"; "slattern deity;" "lazy beast"; "Dear Demon."
Nothing twittering here. His poems have what Elizabeth Bishop valued in writing: Accuracy, Spontaneity, Mystery. (Capital letters and Italics hers.) She was a fan of this wicked poet.
