Collected Poems

**Baudelaire's bio:** Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet, critic, and translator whose work transformed the possibilities of modern poetry. His 1857 masterpiece, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), brought beauty into unsettling proximity with erotic desire, decadence, melancholy, death, intoxication, and the forbidden. The book provoked prosecution for offenses against public morality, and six poems were ordered suppressed. What scandalized Baudelaire's contemporaries ultimately became central to his influence. His poetry helped shape Symbolism and modernism and inspired generations of writers and visual artists. More than a century and a half later, his work remains startlingly intimate and modern: fascinated by the contradictions between beauty and corruption, devotion and lust, pleasure and suffering, heaven and the abyss.

Dr. Walter Martin (PhD, California Coast University) held four earned degrees and was the author of a dozen books. He was internationally known as the host of The Bible Answer Man, a popular syndicated radio call-in program in the U.S. and Canada. He was also the founder and director of Christian Research Institute. Dr. Martin died in 1989.