Greg Boyd's Prose Poem "Eduardo's Nose" with a Commentary

Along with His Comments on "Get Drunk" by Baudelaire

Feb 24, 2025

This post is part of a new series which gives excerpts from an anthology I edited called A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry. A Cast-Iron Aeroplan That Can Actually Fly

In this anthology I asked 80 masters of the prose poem to choose one of their own poems and to write a commentary about the process of writing it. Not only are these prose poems and commentaries interesting in themselves, but they prove that there really is no one way to write a poem, or anything else for that matter. They also are wonderfully insightful mini essays on prose poetry, which is why the anthology has been used in classrooms. Students, and poets in general, are always interested in overhearing a conversation on how other poets compose.

Besides asking Greg permission to reprint his own prose poem and commentary, I asked him to choose a prose poem that influenced him and say something about it. His translation of and reflections on Charles Baudelaire’s “Get Drunk” ends this post.

Greg has always been “subversive” in the good sense of the word, and his indebtedness to Surrealism and Dada will be evident in “Edouard’s Nose.” He was also one of the few poets and editors who championed the prose poem before it was cool. I’m talking about those days that, when prose poets attended literary conferences, they had to wear paper bags over their heads. His latest book is Brotherton's Travels: Memoirs, forthcoming in May from Coyote Arts. For more information, see: https://coyote-arts.com/brotherton

Greg Boyd

EDOUARD’S NOSE

Edouard doesn’t have a head. A torso and limbs, but no head. Facial features in the middle of his back. He smokes a pipe, which he keeps in his mouth most of the time because it’s awkward for him to reach his arms around to the middle of his back. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” painted Magritte, an allusion to the idea that the symbol does not necessarily correspond to the actual physical reality it’s intended to represent. Same goes for the word nose and for the name Edouard, etc.
So much for background information. One day Edouard decided to take a walk. He put his nose on a leash and set out for the park. By the artificial lake he shared a bench with a woman with only one leg. “May I pet your nose?” she asked.
“Certainly,” he replied, “but be careful, he’s not always nice. Would you like a Kleenex?” he added, taking one out of the box he carried with him.
“No thanks, I’m on a diet,” she said, so he ate it himself as she stroked his nose. “Nice nose,” she said when it dripped on her hand.
She caught him staring at her missing leg, though there was nothing to stare at. “It’s an old football injury,” she explained, pointing at the nothing. “By the way, if you don’t mind, if it’s not too personal, what happened to your head?”
“Problem with my nose. Complications in surgery. Had to amputate.” Edouard sighed and lit his pipe. “Dreadful business.”
They talked like this for several minutes. By chance they met again in the same place the next day. In time they became lovers. She started wearing more revealing clothes and got her nose pierced. He took up tarot card reading as an exotic hobby. They rode nude together on a bicycle through the streets of Paris in the early morning. They both claimed to have a total disregard for symbols. Neither of the two would admit to being in love. “Love my nose,” said Edouard. Socially they were a big hit. It was fashionable to be seen at the same restaurant as Edouard and Edouardetta. Everyone ordered boiled nose. That was before the war, when nose was still plentiful.

COMMENTARY

Like Edouard above, who expresses “a total disregard for symbols,” the prose poem itself often noses its thumbs at linguistic convention. Since prose is based on the logic of an agreed-upon set of symbols, readers of prose trust that a particular word, “chair” for example, will not be used to convey the notion of “fast food” or “umbrella.” Poetry undermines this expectation; for the very nose of poetry is metaphor, comparison via the substitution and subsequent fusing of unlike elements. Thus, in prose my love is a beautiful, accomplished, intelligent woman, whereas in poetry she may be a flower, a blowfish, a lawnmower, a nose.

The humor, paradox, irony and playfulness inherent in many of my favorite prose poems results from a head-on collision between the routine linguistic expectations of prose and the intensely lyrical disruptions of poetry. I take particular delight in how the very shape of the prose poem lulls and attracts the unsuspecting reader, who often wades into it expecting the calm waters of the familiar, only to find himself caught in a linguistic riptide.

An unleashed metaphor will wander, tail wagging, from place to place. In short, it will follow its nose. Many of my prose poems start with a metaphor and quickly expand it into its own universe. Each of these miniature worlds has its own unique physical laws and properties, its own logic.

Because they are generally short, highly concentrated narratives, prose poems make wonderful vehicles for a nosy imagination.

It occurs to me that the hero and heroine of my prose poem are both amputees. Edouard has “lost his head,” while Edouardetta is missing a limb. Is this some kind of oblique commentary?

I smell a nose.

Get Drunk

by Charles Baudelaire (translated by Greg Boyd)

One should always be drunk. It’s the answer to the sole question. To keep from suffering the burden of Time, which weighs upon your shoulders and presses you down to the earth, you must get drunk constantly.
But drunk on what? Wine, poetry or virtue—whichever you prefer—only get drunk.
And if sometimes, whether on the steps of a palace, or in the green grass of a ditch, or in the gloomy loneliness of your room, you awaken less inebriated or already sober, then ask the wind and the waves, the stars, the bird, the clock, ask whatever spins or turns or sings or talks, ask them what time it is: then the wind and wave and star and bird and clock will answer you: it’s time to get drunk! So to keep from being the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk without respite, on wine, poetry or virtue, whichever you prefer.”

Commentary

I first encountered the prose poem as an undergraduate, through the work of Charles Baudelaire. I remember owning a battered copy of Paris Spleen, Louise Varèse’s translation of the Petits poèmes en prose published by New Directions, which I had bought in a used book store somewhere in Los Angeles, circa 1978. A couple years later, poet David Trinidad gave me, as a birthday present, a copy of Enid Starkie’s biography of Baudelaire, a text which pointed me to the Oeuvres Complètes in search of Baudelaire’s only published work of fiction, an obscure and previously untranslated comic novella called La Fanfarlo, which I then translated and published in a critical edition. Somewhere between those two events, I attempted my first literary translations, a handful of Baudelaire prose poems, among them one that played a role in my artistic and personal development.

Short and didactic, “Enivrez-vous” (“Get Drunk”) is an oddly deceptive work. In the poem, Baudelaire reminds us that mortality hangs above our heads like the blade of a guillotine. If that weren’t bad enough, we exist in a world in which we spend much of our lives controlled by an endless series of real and metaphorical school bells and factory whistles, a situation that makes us “martyred slaves of Time.” To help us transcend the horror and drudgery, the poet recommends that we maintain a constant state of altered consciousness achievable through a studied dedication to excess: of “wine, poetry or virtue—whichever you prefer.” In other words, to live fully, we must create our own version of the world. We must shake off social indoctrination, feed off our passion, think creatively, develop an aesthetic, and decide for ourselves what is true, what is real, and what has value. We must use our originality to free ourselves from mediocrity and despair. We must get high and stay high on the laughing gas of imagination.

Humor and irony abound in Baudelaire, particularly in the prose poems. “Get Drunk” taught me to ignore rules and to pursue freedom of expression, as well as freedom from artificial boundaries and socially-imposed limitations. It showed me how to hear colors and see music. It encouraged me to learn other languages, to travel and live in other cultures. It gave me permission to drink deeply from the pool of knowledge and to pray at the altar of dreams.

Old Man Still Howling at the Moon

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