THE DRUNKEN BOAT A Life of Rimbaud Author:Martin, Copeland, Martine, Marques Arthur Rimbaud--poet, rebel and revolutionary, explorer and gunrunner. THE DRUNKEN BOAT (LE BATEAU IVRE) tells the story of his tumultuous life, from a bourgeois town in northern France to Paris, the Commune and Paul Verlaine, to the wild deserts of northern Africa.