One phrase which is used endlessly in literature is 'enfant terrible', and it is a phrase which has often been used to describe Arthur Rimbaud.
I personally don't regard him as a stand-out poet. His poetry contains a lot of vivid imagery, a lot of classical allusions and many other poetic techniques such as alliteration and assonance, but his subject matter is often juvenile. This doesn't surprise me considering he was only a very young man when wrote most of them.
There are moments of incredible beauty, granted, but there are also moments of incredible crudeness, where he desrcibes disgusting bodily functions in even more disgusting vernacular. Such poems were hardly worthy of being published, and definitely not worthy of being hailed as genius.
The publishing industry loves to 'create' heroes, especially if they are from the correct background, which Rimbaud was. Unfortunately, Rimbaud was no hero, he was just a reasonably competent poet who wrote a few decent poems. That's about it.