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

America?s most provocative intellectual brings her blazing powers of analysis and appreciation to bear on the great poems of the Western tradition, and on some unexpected discoveries of her own. Combining close reading with a panoramic breadth of learning, Camille Paglia refreshes our understanding of poems we thought we knew, from Shakespeare?s ?Sonnet 73? to Shelley?s ?Ozymandias,? from Donne?s ?The Flea? to Lowell?s ?Man and Wife,? and from Dickinson?s ?Because I Could Not Stop for Death? to Plath?s ?Daddy.?

Paglia also introduces us to less-familiar works by Paul Blackburn, Wanda Coleman, Chuck Wachtel, Rochelle Kraut?and even Joni Mitchell. Daring, riveting, and beautifully written, Break, Blow, Burn will excite even seasoned poetry lovers, and create a generation of new ones. more

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-05-2009

Wrong sample.

The sample shows no poem. I cannot tell at what font size the verse is properly shown.

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From: Amazon
Posted: Apr-29-2009

a logical Next Step after Poetry for Dummies - and I mean that quite favorably!

My experience with poetry is probably quite common. I suffered through a few lessons in high school (Browning, Yeats, Shakespeare, Chaucer) and didn't give verse another thought for 20 years. I tried to add poetry back into my Reading Life because I would like to be able to enjoy language as an...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Jun-16-2008

Great for Everyone

This book is great for students, teachers, and "general readers." The introduction alone is worth the cover price, but you might not want to listen to me. I strongly oppose jargon-filled "literary theory" and instead celebrate logical (and sometimes emotional) close reading. Therefore, the...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Jun-15-2008

Excellent Primer

I have owned this book for a year and find that it equally instructive today as the first. Prof. Paglia provides a solid method for reading and thinking about poetry and other literary forms. Her ability to breakdown each poem and link it to other work made each "chapter" exciting.Her final...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-31-2007

Explicating Shakespeare and Snyder - A critic takes on William and Gary, more

Camille Paglia, professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, made a name for herself in the larger culture with "Sexual Personae" and a series of books that examined, to use the title of another, "Sex, Art, and American Culture."Always the provocateur, Paglia is saddened by "poetry's...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-17-2007

It Breaks Blows and Burns

Paglia's book of commentary on poems gives close sensitive readings of classics. Each 3-4 page essay, an easy read when I have just a few minutes, deepens my understanding of feelings expressed through art. Familiar poems burn brighter after reading her thoughts.

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-15-2007

lightning rod

these reviewers are blowhards ready to laugh the slowest reader out of the room and meanwhile forgetting what they were going to say about this person's or that person's artistic works. Paglia stimulates the imagination and manages to speak beyond coteries. Who else puts poetry into the public...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Jun-10-2007

Her fresh writing, + 43 (mostly) great poems = success

This book is a real refreshment -- a shower of [mostly; I could have done without "Woodstock"] great poems, with just enough stirring, insightful commentary to draw the reader deep into the pool of each poem's meanings and pleasures. The format is very successful, with each typographically...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Nov-28-2006

Buy, Read, Enjoy!

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);...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-30-2006

Excellant Teaching

Ms. Paglia teaches poetry the only way I can really understand it; line by as well as looking at the whole. A great way to begin to learn how to read and enjoy poetry, as well as get an overview of great poems through history. I'm now ordering books by Harold Bloom to continue my study, per...

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