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

From the title's clever juxtaposition of John Donne's Metaphysics and 1950's Beat poets to Joni's Mitchell's whimsical "Woodstock" - the author's tacit declaration that poetry died with Flower Power - Camille Paglia's "Break, Blow, Burn" is a sexually charged sensory overload that drags over four centuries of western verse from academia's cloistered halls to a the masses. The venerable Paglia is brilliant; she bobs and weaves - the patient harangue of a teacher or the sharp jabs of the critic - through a curious but effective selection of forty-three poems pairing mostly household names (Shakespeare, Yeats, Dickinson, Plath...) and more obscure poets (Andrew Marvel or Chuck Wachtel). Paglia, while a career academician, distains the elite snobbery of these institutions which have drifted so far into pointy-headed isolation that their commentary is no longer approachable, citing "cultural studies" as an example of academic malfeasance, "undone by its programmatic Marxism and is a morass of misreadings and overreadings." This contrarian view is reflected in the selections, and as Paglia notes in the introduction, she finds "too much work by the most acclaimed poets labored, affected, and verbose, intended not to communicate with the general audience but to impress their fellow poets." Boom.I suspect I'm a good example of the target audience for "Break, Blow, Burn" - a voracious reader fascinated with the visceral power of the language as bent and twisted by an expert wordsmith. I consider poetry as the height of literary art form, but also very frustrating without the literary depth and knowledge to spin the poet's Rubic's cube of allegory and metaphor into meaning beyond the raw emotion of verse itself. Robert Lowell's "Man and Wife," for example, with "the rising sun in war paint dyes us red;/in broad daylight her gilded bed posts shine," - is stirring stuff. But without the context of Lowell's troubled life and failed marriages, it is "simply" rich imagery. Paglia, her broad knowledge, keen insight, and razor wit filling in the blanks, transforming the vaguely disturbing "Man and Wife" into an epic of Lowell's rise and fall running in parallel with American culture - condensed in twenty-eight lines. Then there is Shelley's staggering "Ozymandias," a tour de force on its own, but so much more powerful under Paglia's guiding hand, woven with Colleridge's "Kubla Khan," Yeat's "The Second Coming," or Emily Dickinson's unsettling apocalyptic visions. Chuck Wachtel's audaciously titled "A Paragraph Made Up of Seven Sentences Which Have Entered My Memory Via Hearing Them or Reading Them Have Left an Impression There Like the Slender Scar Left by a Salamander in a Piece of Rapidly Cooling Igneous Rock" says as much about America pop culture as a museum filled with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Paul Blackburn's wry "The Once-Over" - "a hipster's syncopated ode to female sexual power," all the more revealing thanks to Paglia's honest feminism; the Feminist Movement must rise above the tired banality of sexual harassment and at least recognize - if not manipulate - the awesome power women enjoy over men. "So."If there were a centerpiece in the masterful collection, I'd go with Sylvia Plath's acidic angst - "Daddy" - the longest at a mere 80 lines. As Plath rants abuses of her dead father in a style so extreme Paglia observes that while Plath may have many imitators, "she may have exhausted her style in creating it." Paglia, ever breaking the mold, is hardly another critic heaping awe on the iconic Plath. Rather, she challenges the poet's victimhood - the justification of casting her father as Hitler - the incongruence of Plath's "comfortable middleclass upbringing and privileged education with the unspeakable annals of `Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen." "What atrocities did (Plath) suffer?" she asks. This is Paglia at her curmudgeon best - poking, prodding, provoking, challenging the conventional wisdom, never yielding to peer pressure or political correctness as she pricks the inflated buffoonery of her affected contemporaries."Break, Blow, Burn" is an unmitigated delight - an inspiring read - a reminder that the English language can have impact when compressed, despite what Paglia describes as "the diminution of language over the past two centuries." Soaring from Shakespeare's "lark at break of day arising" and plunging to the "Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich" depths of Roethke's "Root Cellar," Paglia's crushes her stated goal: to "write concise commentaries on poetry that illuminate the text but also give pleasure in themselves as pieces of writing." A milestone in unraveling the mysteries of verse; a must read for anyone who loves and appreciates our language. Bravo.

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.

Best close readings I've read of many of the best poems ever written in English. Only a few recent selections. She said she couldn't find anything recent that she thought could stand beside the earlier selections. Wish she had gone ahead with a few more anyway.

excellent, and very savvy critiques of forty-three poems

good, prompt job

Paglia's precise and often gracious readings of these poems (her choices, with a careful afterword explaining why) rather than lengthy academic folderol mark this collection as my choice of an "anthology" for poetry workshops.

Great book to learn and love (or vice versa) English as a second language. And thus develop passion for English literature as well. Pink cover and subtext in the title might be too much "ad trick" for Camilla's intelligence. This book is just too good for this cover, IMHO. Maybe it's just my lack of knowledge in gay area.

Love this book. Paglia is contrarian and smart. Her essays are intriguing. I use them in my AP Lit class to help students develop awareness of both voice and critical approaches. If you like to read poetry, Paglia will walk you through some great poems with insight and context.

Paglia's insights "Batter my heart (...) and make me new."

Fabulous, brilliant! Everyone should own a copy!

A free thinker, bold and bright as the sun. The selections are rich and traverse centuries but the summation of plausible significance to us today expounded by Paglia is humbling. If you're a Peterson fan and were curious where "All the flowers have gone?" I submit it is Paglia. She was there.

Don't except some dry textbook commentary here. As the bold black and pink cover indicates, this book is brimming with Paglia's incicisive wit and erudition.

I enjoy Paglia's critical writings - they are so insightful; but this collection of poems (with a very American bias) has left me feeling a little let down. The comments on the poems seem to me to be far too often highly subjective and not well supported by examples from the text.