Customer Reviews

Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Paglia offers a book to a generation absorbed with images, detached from the interior of culture. Paglia writes, "The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words.'' Here she demonstrates the power of words for suggesting images better than those seen with eyes.

Paglia is captivated by poetry. The reader's interest develops when she carefully (maybe a little dryly) commentates on one poem at a time - avoiding general brushstrokes as she identifies the subtleties from various lines. As it's been said, "from this book you could doubt several aspects of her taste in poetry. But you couldn't doubt her love of it."

You can hear Paglia's disappointment when she writes, "Along the way I've encountered so many people in the publishing world, in magazines, who said to me, you know, 'I always keep up with the new novels, but not poetry.' These are really literary people, and even they feel poetry no longer speaks to them."

Paglia suggests an explanation for the decline in the love of poetry, "Thanks to 25 years of post-structuralism in our elite colleges, we have this idea now that you are supposed to use your pseudo-sociological critical eye to look down on the work and find everything that's wrong with it," ...this style of teaching just nips students' enthusiasm in the bud."

However, her statement is tempered by what I appreciate most - her discrimination regarding true talent and her lack of tolerance for those poetry artists who insist on using it as an instrument of civil rights - while at the same time lacking excellence in their work.

While Paglia's selection of 43 poems may be `eclectic', she comments on superior works including Shelley's retro-prophetic `Ozymandias', Coleridge's heroic `Kubla Khan', and Wallace Stevens's gem `Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock'

Paglia's strength is teaching us how to visualize implication in the once inconsequential, and thereby to making a poem alive and memorable. Perhaps that's the very purpose of poetry.

Once past the self-aggrandizing intro, the reader arrives at a wonderful course: Introduction to Poetry Appreciation, taught by an enthusiastic teacher. Ms. Paglia's explication of canonical (and some not so) poems comes across as sane, intelligent, insightful and probably correct. Almost as important, she knows when to stop and regularly refuses to overread. The writing is clear and frequently witty. If you are looking for a helpful entree into reading poetry, sign up for this course.

Break, Blow, Burn has been waiting in my pile of books to be read for a few weeks now, but I was finally driven to it as a result of a review in the October Poetry Magazine. That review was generally positive, but probably not clear enough to have encouraged me to buy.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. Paglia has chosen 43 of what she describes as the world's best poems. Not the top 43 it should be said. Her choice is eclectic, as mine or yours would be. Some I endorse, others not. Her close reading of them is enjoyable, intelligent, well written and occasionally enlightening. I disagree with many of the conclusions she draws, and so would you, probably, but I find reading another insight to be of value and that, again occasionally, they modify my own view. What more could you ask.

Paglia is not a great proponent of contemporary poetry and the latest she includes are the lyrics to Woodstock by Joni Mitchell.

The Washington Post review included at Amazon considers that the book will not satisfy readers acquainted with the dead poets she includes. If correct, that is a pity. Those of us that spend much time with long dead poets do tend to achieve a world view of the poet that becomes immutable. Our loss, and to read other views is invaluable, for me at least. Perhaps he complains of a lack of depth, personally I am all for brevity and clarity rather than the mystery that some critics feel is necessary. Of course, what review would be complete without the need to demonstrate the author's ignorance and the reviewer's wisdom. The errors that Stephen Burt picks out are hardly material and a wiser reviewer would have omitted them.


I am glad I bought it and glad I read it.

honestly people, stop whining already!

My mother sent me this book after I discovered a latent admiration and adoration of Edmund Spenser, and for that matter, all structured poetry. (never been a big fan of all that mindless crap that so-called poets are constantly spewing.)
Her advice was to read "The Faerie Queene" in conjunction with "Sexual Personae", advice which I gratefully (if a bit cautiously) took... after all she is my mother and not entirely "with the times" per se.
And thus, my discovery of Camille Paglia (and since I am not as old as some of the other reviewers and was born WAAAAAY after whatever controversy she was involved in, and I simply don't know for god's sake I'm only 20). I find her to be witty and intelligent as well as eloquent, with a deliciously fine grasp of language. Her writing style alone makes this book enjoyable.

However, (isn't there always a 'however'?) as she puts it, the poems in the book are HER choices and since choice signifies subjectivism it is safe to say that not everyone will agree as to the A) importance and B) prominence of said poems. That may seem redundant, however it is not.
Also, she specifically states that ALL of the poems are originally written in ENGLISH. Thus there is no Baudelaire. No Petrarch (I'm 99% certain I misspelled that but I'm too lazy to check). In fact, not a single "multicultural" poem in the lot. If you take issue with that then you should look at something else to read.

I would recommend this book. I certainly find it delightful (and her critiques are well thought out and well executed, none of that high-brow, ivory tower academic nonsense). I quite like this book and have decided to read through all the rest of her writings.

but then again, I'm only twenty and not exactly an authority on these matters.

p.s. I'd give the book more stars but I'd like to re-read it first...

When I first read that Camille Paglia was working on a book about poetry my mind screamed: "Nooooo!!!! What is she thinking?" I had previously read rumors that she was penning a sequel to "Sexual Personae" that focused on contemporary society and the spectacle of paganism inherent in seemingly mundane events such as football games; I believe there was even a statement by her to that effect. But no, what she had been laboring on for years was not a tome-ish SexII but rather a slim pink book explaining poems from freshmen college courses. What. Was. She. Thinking?

"Sexual Personae" is one of the few books I have read that had a profound influence on me, more profound than Joyce's "Ulysses." I remember first reading "Sexual Personae" in my (then) Central Park West apartment on a sunny morning overlooking the park. I didn't move for hours, only the shadows in the living room did. I had come to the book via a professor at Brooklyn College who read an excerpt from the Emily Dickenson chapter and thought she was marvelous. I was not expecting the scope of the book, my mind was overloaded as I went from century to century, art movement to art movement, reading psychosexual analysis of influential artists and philosophers and, concomitantly, Western civilization itself. Absurd liberal vagaries of truth were blown out of the water on virtually every page. Paglia, although a liberal herself, is too much of a brilliant straight shooter to buy into liberal fantasies and chic victimology. I have had three copies of the book since it came out in the mid-90s. "Sexual Personae" is a book you don't just read, you live with it.

The two follow-ups, "Sex, Art, and American Culture" and "Vamps and Tramps" are by comparison essays cobbled together willy-nilly from the closet. They are fun, but reading them after "Sexual Personae" is like following up a dinner of filet mignon and dark red wine with pop-rocks. When I read that she was working on SPII, part of me did not like that she was going back to SP and simply rearranging the ivy of her laurels, but another encyclopedic pagan bible was preferable to another "Vamps and Tramps." What Paglia was really doing now seems to me in hindsight the only logical road to take: how do you follow up the sweeping, deep scarlet grandeur of "Sexual Personae"?

You don't.

"Break, Blow, Burn" made me fall in love with poetry again. I suppose I had never fallen out of love with it so let me put it this way: it put the passion back into my love for poetry. I read with trepidation the introductory sentence "I have tried to write concise commentaries on poetry that illuminate the text but also give pleasure in themselves as pieces of writing." Yes, "pleasure in themselves" while sitting alongside Donne's Holy Sonnets and William Blake's "London". Righto. My initial skepticism nothwithstanding, she actually succeeded, and what a pleasure it is to read her commentary. Paglia's Apollonian/Dionysian eternal struggle is left back in "Sexual Personae." The scope here is not cosmic/historical struggle but individual vision. In this sense "Break, Blow, Burn" is microscopic, not telescopic, it is measured, not breathless. How refreshing to have Paglia turn her high-powered perception from something grand like Western history and Western sexual identity to something tiny, like a poem. For that the book is tighter, intimate, and not scattered like "V&T" and "Sex, Art, and American Culture". The poems are great and it's evident that she is phenomenal at explicating them. The poems, most of them no more than a page, are imbued with a richness that Paglia masterfully shines light on, fulfilling her goal to "illuminate" them.

If you had told me months ago that I would be reading a hot pink book about famous poems while on the subway to work I would've laughed. Far from laughing, I'm grateful to Camille Paglia. This book is a 180 degree turn from "Sexual Personae" and it's both brilliant and surprising for being just that. At the same time, it's a borrowing into the themes of "Sexual Personae" - it's the raw poetry of SP without crossing an eon of human history. The passion of humans is condensed here and it's wickedly beautiful. Paglia most certainly knows this and is hypnotized by it as much as you and I.

Paglia has clearly retreated from the limelight and is doing what she does best: teaching. You can argue with the book's subtitle (her pick of the world's best poems all happen to have been written in English); you can argue with her choices (at least when she gets into the late 20th century); and you can argue with the specifics of her analyses (she identifies Ralph Pomeroy's use of the word "craver" as a misprint for "craker," a type of crow); but you can't argue with her passion and commitment to careful, line-by-line reading of poetry. All of the poems discussed are short lyric poems which are reprinted in the volume (so you don't have to hunt them down). Most poems warrant 3 to 6 pages of discussion. Paglia does not ramble or reflect idly. These short essays are dense but lively, and clearly the distillation of many years' worth of teaching notes. Every sentence is a gem. Paglia provides biographical information on the poets' lives, but is not quick to assume that when a poet writes in the first person s/he is speaking about her/himself. On the other hand, where poets freight their works with many personal references, as Frank O'Hara does in "A Mexican Guitar," she acknowledges this fact while giving the reader permission to find delight in them without ever expecting to unlock all their mysteries. Her reading of Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" is worth the price of the book.

I have despaired of ever seeing volume 2 of SEXUAL PERSONAE, where Paglia promised to go deeper into discussion of film and pop culture. But I was glad to have come across this little volume of thoughtful literary criticism. She definitely has renewed my interest in the Metaphysical poets, Whitman, Dickinson, Williams, and Roethke, among others.

For all those of you who have poopooed this work, PLEASE give me a break.
Reading this work is like a glass of fine wine after a superb meal. OK I might be pedestrian and not totally aware of all the nuances,conceits, and refinements of "poetry", I do recall these several of these poems and their authors from a higher education of decades long past. If I had had a explicator like Ms. Paglia address these works I know I would have seen the beauty of them in a much greater light. Remember not everyone can understand string theory.
I really was not keen to buying the book but I figured what the hey Camille is great writer, entertainer and most wonderfully an honest provocateur so I got it.
And was I ever thrilled, I read this book the way I choose, picking the chapters that strike me, I read it in the moments when I am ready to go my past and experience something I knew, didn't know, thought I knew, or want to know. Half way through the book I have not been disapointed and will savor the final half as much as I have the first.
So for all you prig reviewers out there who wish to let me know how I should view the world of the metaphorical word all I have to say to you is BREAK, BLOW, and BURN.

Reading this book one poem per day will cause a emotional and spiritual depth charge to detonate in your unconscious.
We had a great discussion in our book club. We waved the "read the whole book" rule and asked everyone to come with at least three poems that they had read deeply. We had a wonderful discussion on everything from the nature of poetry to Woodstock.
Taste and see.

I have never appreciated more what Camille Paglia has done. How fortunate those several little known poets are to have caught her eye and thus be included in this wonderful treasure. Paglia now teaches at my alma mater and how difficult it is for me not to matriculate once again to bask in her indolence. But I am 80 now and have miles and miles to go.

....she is 'right on' these classic poems--To His Coy Mistress should be every freshman's poem and Paglia elucidates why, Lagston Hughes Jazzonia compares Harlem of the Harlem Renaissance to ancient Mesopotamia, and Lady Lazarus works through some serious love/hate of papa and the paternalistic world of letters and Camille breaks it down for us. Plus she throws in Joni Mitchell, Walt Whitman, the ghostly speech from Hamlet, and one of my favorites Shelley's Ozymandias. In her introduction, she describes her personal experiences with the world of poetry from her Italian heritage to well done tv ads (such as the M&Ms commercial) to meeting and being influenced by her college mentors, Bloom and Kessler. I have been entralled by her style of criticism and popular culture reviewing since her days at the Netzine Salon. Here, she is a little subdued from some of those articles, but nevertheless, her passion about these pieces seem to have lifted the literary criticism world out of it's doldrums. Paglia's poetry book should not only help ol' dogs like me to get back into the reading and enjoyment of poetry and literature--(heck, I'm jealous of those kids who have been able to sign up in one of her classes)--but it also should give those kids in Lit 101 a big hand. This is a very good book by a living legend and a great Lady of Letters. Get it. You will enjoy every page.