Flowers of Bad is David Cameron's false translation of Charles
Baudelaire's 19th century masterpiece, Les Fleurs du Mal. Developing, revamping and refurbishing them along the way, Cameron has employed original methods of translation—outlined in detail at the end of the book—evolved from difficulties he has encountered in writing and translation. Rather than trying to build a bridge across the gap that exists between his and Baudelaire's languages, Cameron descends a rope ladder into the chasm itself.

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"David Cameron's "translations" of Baudelaire are actually no such thing. They are poems by David Cameron, brilliant, beautiful, and original. His rejection of literalness in approaching his French material has forced him into fervors of inventiveness where his nutty imagination takes sturdy shape, buttressed perhaps by Baudelaire's structures but creating out of them new worlds that are all his own and now, thankfully, ours too."

—Harry Mathews

"Lovers of this immense, generous and magical text are delighted that Flowers of Bad will no longer have to be passed hand to hand. Cameron's false translation has drunk of Baudelaire's "pure et divine liqueur" but, instead of languishing within the hysteria that so sickened the master, these bad flowers fully inhabit "the mayhem laughing." Vertiginous as the Coney Island Cyclone and as dazzlingly risky, these micro-tales and imaginal incidents are exploded into being, alchemically, by the means of a mistaken, and pains taken mistranslation. Inspired by Jackson Mac Low's spirit and poetic procedures, the text is modern, and beyond. Flowers of Bad is, incidentally, funny as hell. And truly an "Invitation au Voyage."

—Kimberly Lyons

David Cameron may very well be the best of the unknown rip-off
artists of his generation.

—Jack Spicer