With an echo of Ovid, Charles Baudelaire, the great French writer, sees himself as a poetic Icarus, who has flown too close to the sun and been scorched by the experience. Hear “Les Plaintes d’un Icare” in French and follow in English here; see the illustrated blog post here.

Set between references to classical myth, today’s new poem uses a captive swan to summon up the anguish of those who have lost something irreplaceable in Baudelaire’s poem mourning the destruction of the old city of Paris. Hear the French and follow in English here, and see the illustrated blog post here.