FADE IN:

INT. IOWA WRITERS' WORKSHOP — POETRY SEMINAR ROOM — DAY

A circle of earnest MFA students. Coffee cups. Moleskines. One person has a therapy dog. A whiteboard reads: "WORKSHOP GUIDELINES — RESPECT THE WORK."

RIMBAUD (17, unwashed, still drunk at 9am, smells like absinthe and fuck you) slouches in his chair. His manuscript pages are crumpled and stained. He is staring across the circle at a male student who has clearly read too much Rimbaud—rumpled linen shirt, artfully unkempt hair, a grey four button wool jacket.

WORKSHOP LEADER (50s, tweed skirt, kind smile, dead inside) stands at the whiteboard with a dry-erase marker.

WORKSHOP LEADER Welcome, everyone. Before we begin, I want to go over some workshop guidelines. They're the same ones you've used elsewhere I'm sure, they're meant to protect you. And the work.

She writes "THE WORK" on the whiteboard and underlines it twice.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) Rule one. When we discuss a poem, we use craft language. We express likes or dislikes. We talk about what the poem is doing. What the poem is reaching for.

RIMBAUD pulls a flask from his coat. Drinks. No one acknowledges this.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) Rule two. When a poem is being discussed, the author is silent.

She lets this land. Looks around the circle.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) You don't defend or explain. You sit. And you listen. This can be uncomfortable and that's okay. Think of it is liberation, not restriction.

RIMBAUD snorts. Everyone, including the therapy dog, looks at him.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) Rule three. We refer to "the speaker," not "you." The poem is its own object. We say "the speaker feels" not "you feel." This protects the author. It also protects the poem.

She writes "THE SPEAKER ≠ THE AUTHOR" on the whiteboard.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) Rule four — and this is important — imagery must be earned. If the poem makes a big emotional move, we ask: has the poem done the work to get us there? Has it earned that moment?

RIMBAUD (to no one, quietly) Earned.

RIMBAUD suddenly turns to look directly at the student dressed like a bohemian. His eyes narrow. He leans forward.

RIMBAUD (CONT'D) (in French, directly to the bohemian student) Toi. D'où viens-tu?

The bohemian student freezes. Looks around. No one else reacts.

RIMBAUD (CONT'D) (more insistent, still French) Comment sommes-nous arrivés ici? Pourquoi tout le monde est mort? C'est le purgatoire ou l'enfer?

The WORKSHOP LEADER's pen stops mid-air. Her face goes pale. She understands every word.

The bohemian student stammers, looking for help from the others.

BOHEMIAN STUDENT Je ne parl... Ahhh! I don't speak—

RIMBAUD (cutting him off, louder, French) Tu portes mes vêtements mais tu ne parles pas ma langue? Quelle sorte de fantôme es-tu?

BOHEMIAN STUDENT (panicking, words tumbling out) Sono uno studente, io non—

RIMBAUD (sharp, victorious, in English) Aha! You're a filthy Italian! I knew it.

The WORKSHOP LEADER clears her throat.

WORKSHOP LEADER He's not Italian, Arthur.

RIMBAUD Then why does he speak like one?

WORKSHOP LEADER He's... studying. Languages. It's part of the program.

RIMBAUD stares at the bohemian student. Something dangerous in his eyes.

RIMBAUD Come ti chiami?

The bohemian student looks to the WORKSHOP LEADER for help. She hesitates. Closes her eyes briefly.

WORKSHOP LEADER His name is Dante.

Long pause. RIMBAUD starts to laugh, as if now it all makes sense.

RIMBAUD So we are in hell.

WORKSHOP LEADER (quietly, in perfect French) Arthur. Nous sommes en Iowa. C'est 2025. Vous êtes... invité.

RIMBAUD stares at her. Something like recognition. Then disgust.

RIMBAUD (back to English, to no one) Iowa. Where are the natives and the buffalo?

He drinks from his flask.... and is suddenly lost in thought.

WORKSHOP LEADER Arthur?

RIMBAUD (still looking out the window. But then snaps back.) Nothing. Go on. Tell us what the poem wants.

WORKSHOP LEADER (beat, then recovering) Rule five. We don't offer solutions. If something isn't working, we name it. We don't rewrite each other's poems. We say "this moment felt unearned" not "you should change this line to —"

RIMBAUD shifts in his chair. Something chemical is happening inside him.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) And finally—we lead with generosity. What's working? What has energy? Then we move to concerns. It's a conversation. Not a trial.

She caps the marker. Smiles.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) Okay. So. Let's start with Marcus's poem today. Marcus, you know the rules—just listen.

MARCUS (28, earnest, from Kansas City, has a tattoo of a Rilke quote he won't show anyone) nods solemnly. Folds his hands.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) Who'd like to begin?

STUDENT 1 (cardigan, septum piercing, uses "praxis" unironically) I just want to say — I really felt the restraint here. The terra cotta image recurs but it never overplays its hand. The poem trusts the reader.

General nodding.

STUDENT 3 (Amherst, has read Bluets four times, once aloud to an ex) I agree. And "sweetness seeping into root and stone"—that line is doing so much work. It's grounding the whole emotional register of the piece.

WORKSHOP LEADER Good. What about the ending? "She tells herself this is enough."

STUDENT 1 I think it's earned.

More nodding. RIMBAUD shifts in his chair, and is blinking rapidly, rubbing his eyes. Then knocking the side of his head as if to clear something stuck in his ear.

STUDENT 3 I do wonder if the poem could sit with the image a little longer before the turn. Like—the lemon tree. There's more there. But the restraint is really lovely.

WORKSHOP LEADER Marcus, I think we're all saying the same thing—this is careful, controlled work. You should feel good about this.

MARCUS looks like he just received communion.

WORKSHOP LEADER (CONT'D) (looks at her folder) Arthur, welcome. We're so glad you're here. Now, I've read your poem "The Drunken Boat"—

RIMBAUD Le Bateau Ivre.

WORKSHOP LEADER Yes. And I think there's real... energy here. But I'm wondering if we might discuss some of the more challenging imagery? The rivers, the sun, the—there's a lot of sensory material. It's very rich.

STUDENT 1 I want to name something. I'm troubled by the implications of the boat metaphor. The language of discovery, the "red-skinned" line—I think the poem needs to interrogate its own positionality.

RIMBAUD Interrogate its positionality.

STUDENT 1 Yes. Exactly—

RIMBAUD Where are the red-skins? The Iowans?

Silence.

STUDENT 1 (carefully) I mean... Iowa is right out there. You can—look out the window.

RIMBAUD turns and looks out the window for a long moment. The flat land. The winter sky. The parking lot.

He turns back.

Student 3 My mom is from Des Moines.

RIMBAUD (CONT'D) It's not a metaphor.

STUDENT 1 Right, but all language is —

RIMBAUD It's not a metaphor.

STUDENT 3 I think what Taylor's saying is that intent doesn't erase impact, and if we're being generous to the poem, we might ask whether the imagery could do the same work without—

RIMBAUD You overfeed your poem and he gets fat and falls asleep.

STUDENT 2 (earnest, from Connecticut, working on a novel about his grandmother's curio cabinet) I just want to flag "fat" as — that's a loaded term for some people in this room—

STUDENT 3 And "he." The poem doesn't have a—we don't assign gender to—

RIMBAUD He. The poem is a he. He drinks. He fights. He goes to sea. Do you want to hear it?

Pause. The room doesn't know what to do with this.

WORKSHOP LEADER Arthur, in workshop the author listens—

RIMBAUD (standing) Do you want to hear it? The poem. Out loud. In the room. As it was meant to exist.

He is already holding the pages. He is not asking. He is barely even talking to them. He is talking to the poem, or to himself, or to whatever lives inside the poem that isn't him and isn't separate from him.

WORKSHOP LEADER Arthur, we don't typically—

He begins.

RIMBAUD As I drifted on a river I could not control I felt the haulers' ropes release their hold. Yelping redskins had taken them as targets and nailed them naked to their painted poles.

The room is still. Not polite-still. Still-still. Something is happening that wasn't in the syllabus.

RIMBAUD (CONT'D) I cared nothing for any kind of crew, carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton. When my haulers let their uproar die, the rivers let me drift wherever I wanted.

His voice is getting louder. Not shouting. Filling. The way a room fills with water.

RIMBAUD (CONT'D) Into the furious lashing of the tides— emptier than children's minds—I ran last winter! And loosened peninsulas have never known a more triumphant din.

STUDENT 1 has stopped writing. STUDENT 3's pen is on the table. The therapy dog is lying flat, chin on paws, ears down. MARCUS is looking at his own hands.

RIMBAUD (CONT'D) The storm blessed my sea-borne vigils. Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves that men call eternal rollers of victims, ten nights, not missing the lanterns' idiot eyes.

The WORKSHOP LEADER is sitting very still. Her dry-erase marker has rolled off the table. She has not picked it up.

Something is crossing her face. Not approval. Not the workshop smile. Something older than that. Something she went to graduate school to feel and then spent twenty years teaching herself not to.

RIMBAUD (CONT'D) I have bathed in the Poem of the Sea, infused with stars and turned to milk, devouring the green azures, where—pale and ravished—a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks.

He stops. The room is silent. The specific silence of people who have just been inside something and are now back outside it and don't know what to do with their hands.

RIMBAUD stands there. Breathing. Sweat on his forehead. He looks, for a moment, like what he is: seventeen and alone in a country where no one speaks his language and every room he enters smells like compromise.

Then:

STUDENT 1 (gently, carefully) I—that was—I think we can all acknowledge the energy there. But I still want to hold space for the problematic—

RIMBAUD (not angry—worse: clear) You people are already dead and don't know it.

He walks to the door, leaving his pages on the desk. Stops. Turns.

RIMBAUD (CONT'D) "Luminous" or "luminescent?" When you decide in twenty years, remember: I chose the desert.

He exits.

Long pause.

STUDENT 2 (earnest, from Connecticut, working on a novel about his grandmother's curio cabinet) Should we... should we still workshop his sestina on Thursday?

WORKSHOP LEADER (still looking at the door) Yes. We'll workshop Arthur's sestina on Thursday.

She hasn't moved. No one has noticed that she hasn't moved.

CUT TO:

INT. SEMINAR ROOM — LATER

Empty chairs. Cold coffee.

On Rimbaud's desk is Marcus’s careful poem about terra cotta and restraint, he has written:

CLOSE ON THE PAGE:

Terra cotta in the blood-warm kitchen
where she let me take her standing,
the cat watching like a monk,
the lemon tree outside splitting in the heat.

He planted it and never touched her again.
The nectary breaks under simple gravity.
Everything falls.
The fledgling strikes tile like a saint.

The thing that writhes and hisses in the dark
is just the night trying to spit out its own name.

And below it, underlined twice:

EARNED.

The WORKSHOP LEADER stands over the desk. She reads the page. Reads it again.

Twenty years of craft language. Twenty years of protection. And here is this filthy child who split the poem open like fruit and let it rot properly.

She folds the page. Puts it in her pocket.

She will carry it for years.

FADE TO BLACK.

notes

I is an other. JE est un autre. and we are both somebody else.

Parnassian?

Derangement of senses

Poetry is a mask concealing a void.

Rimbaud feels reckless. Big risks. Big emotions. Big metaphors.