"This book examines the multiple representations (referential, structural, textual) of temporality in Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris to better understand how the manipulations of time and narrative contribute to the singular, often strange poetics of this Baudelaire work. The Art of Procrastination asks how Baudelaire's poetry in prose tells (human/modern/literary) time, and how time and narrative tell the story of poetry in prose." "Krueger navigates the time and space of Le Spleen de Paris, treating Baudelaire's singular prose poem genre (both the individual pieces and their relationship to one another), demonstrating how poetry in prose provides a medium for Baudelaire's poetics of procrastination, hesitation, digression, and the killing of time (wasting it, nullifying it). Close readings reveal a convergence of narrative, temporal progression, and (would-be) linear movement in space, most often treated thematically in prose poems about travel, and echoed structurally in instances of repetition, intertextuality, and intratextuality." "The Art of Procrastination is applicable to Baudelaire scholars and their students in French and Comparative Literature, as well as to readers interested in cultural studies (particularly the cultural relativity of the experience of temporality), theories of literary genre, narrative and poetry."--BOOK JACKET.