49th out of 100 books
—
38 voters
Break, Blow, Burn
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 “O...more
Paperback, 304 pages
Published
January 24th 2006
by Vintage
(first published March 29th 2005)
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All in all, this is one of the most useful books on poetry I've ever read.
For Break Blow Burn, Paglia selected, as the garish but intriguing pink and black cover says, forty-three of the world's best poems (from expected choices like Shakespeare to surprising, quirky inclusions like Joni Mitchell) and explicated them. As always, she is scintillating, sensual and enticingly campy and controversial and her prose is beautiful. She labored a long time on this short work, but it never feels labored....more
For Break Blow Burn, Paglia selected, as the garish but intriguing pink and black cover says, forty-three of the world's best poems (from expected choices like Shakespeare to surprising, quirky inclusions like Joni Mitchell) and explicated them. As always, she is scintillating, sensual and enticingly campy and controversial and her prose is beautiful. She labored a long time on this short work, but it never feels labored....more
Jan 11, 2008
paige
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommended to paige by:
Colleen
Shelves:
lit-poetry-classics
the book is divided in half; the first part serving to review poems she finds particuarly useful and most often discussed in her classes. the second part of the criticisms focuses on more modern favorites (Plath, Roethke, Williams, Toomer). regardless, her way of approaching almost all of the 43 discussed poems comes off as a lecture and are about two to three pages- background, word by word interpretation, et cetera. i loved it, but sometimes became almost elementary in its approach. either way...more
Paglia's take on the "best poems" starts with antiquity and ends with relatively modern writing and what was disappointing is she starts off on fire and cools down as the book progresses. I've truly never been so excited about reading Shakespeare's sonnets but after reading her break down and pseudo-analysis, I read them over and over again with renewed fervor. It seems the whole book really centers around her essay on Plath's "Daddy" and this is a decent essay but nothing really new. As the boo...more
I love this book and think we should all make books like this and share them with our friends. It's like poetry's version of a deejay set. It was so much fun to turn each page and see which poems she picked as her absolute favorites over history, organized chronologically. (Although I did get impatient for time to pass after the first 10 or so poems, which all seemed to be either about god or convincing some woman to sleep with the author- it was all good once the romantics kicked in, though.) T...more
Cool book of the best poems broken down line by line.
From Publishers Weekly
The still-vocal critic of Sexual Personae, a book that drew on poetry and painting for its de-deconstructions of gender, checks in with an anthology of 43 poems, along with her own close readings of them. Her introduction offers a jumble of justifications for undertaking such a project (though she is "unsure whether the West's chaotic personalism can prevail against the totalizing creeds that menace it," she hopes it will...more
From Publishers Weekly
The still-vocal critic of Sexual Personae, a book that drew on poetry and painting for its de-deconstructions of gender, checks in with an anthology of 43 poems, along with her own close readings of them. Her introduction offers a jumble of justifications for undertaking such a project (though she is "unsure whether the West's chaotic personalism can prevail against the totalizing creeds that menace it," she hopes it will...more
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 explainin...more
What she says makes sense! So, you can't discredit her. Paglia has a wild personality and an amazing memory. This was a great read. I especially enjoyed her analysis of Emily Dickinson and William Carlos Williams.
She has great skill as a writer. Not one sentence lies flat on the page. Oftentimes, she seems like she wants to get the reader riled up... But I applaud her... too many writers are complacent and aren't up for a fight. She's landing punches on every page of her analysis.
She has great skill as a writer. Not one sentence lies flat on the page. Oftentimes, she seems like she wants to get the reader riled up... But I applaud her... too many writers are complacent and aren't up for a fight. She's landing punches on every page of her analysis.
I rather liked the first section where paglia writes about older "classic" poetry and thought she had some fantastic insights.
By midway through the modern poems, though, I was ready to throw in the towel. As several other reviewers here have said, she tends to project some of her own personal issues into every poem and she comes across as saying that her reading is the only way these poems can be read.
I am certainly not a prude and I've taken enough gender studies and lit classes to know that s...more
By midway through the modern poems, though, I was ready to throw in the towel. As several other reviewers here have said, she tends to project some of her own personal issues into every poem and she comes across as saying that her reading is the only way these poems can be read.
I am certainly not a prude and I've taken enough gender studies and lit classes to know that s...more
This book was as hard to slog through as Raber’s The Problem of Information. At least with that book I knew that there was a point. Oh. That sounds wrong. I don’t mean a point in a rational sense. Not sure how to say it.
I read a great review of this book a couple years back and knowing I needed to broaden my extremely limited exposure to poetry I added it to my wishlist. My daughter gave it to me as a present and I finally got to reading it earlier this year.
I think I would have enjoyed it mu...more
I read a great review of this book a couple years back and knowing I needed to broaden my extremely limited exposure to poetry I added it to my wishlist. My daughter gave it to me as a present and I finally got to reading it earlier this year.
I think I would have enjoyed it mu...more
Dec 11, 2009
Blythe
marked it as to-read
I'm loving this so far. I checked it out from the library because her crit of "Daddy" was intriguing. I agree with a reviewer on this site who complained about Paglia's choice of mostly dead white male poets, but it doesn't bother me much. The criticisms she offers are insightful and I'm learning a lot just by looking at how she reads a poem. She makes really great connections and teases out meanings I never would have done.
It only took me about four years to get through this book, but that's because I read every poem several times and tried to make my own analysis before I read hers. And then I'd get excited if we both thought the same thing. But usually I missed all the sex stuff.
Only real complaint is that it has this huge time span, Shakespeare, Blake, Dickinson, Lowell, O'Hara, but it stops in 1970. The book was published in 2005. I know the last quarter of the century wasn't a great age of poetry or anything...more
Only real complaint is that it has this huge time span, Shakespeare, Blake, Dickinson, Lowell, O'Hara, but it stops in 1970. The book was published in 2005. I know the last quarter of the century wasn't a great age of poetry or anything...more
I liked this book more than I thought I would. At first it seems a little arrogant--she writes as if her interpretation is the only one; it may be HER interpretation, but it's not necessarily the ONLY interpretation, whereas her tone is sort of "it means what I say it means". But I ended up enjoying this mini-class in The Big Poems. It made me think of the remedial English class I worked with at a junior college; I think they would have gotten a lot out of this book, because it takes a refreshin...more
This has probably been one of the most wonderful books I've found, a book to keep with you always. In this book of poems Camille Paglia writes the most scintillating essays for each poem, explaining the poem, placing it in its historical context and yet so much more than that! The book provides a commentary on the most profound and heartfelt aspects of living as a human being.It's all there: death, sex, love, bitterness, sorrow, joy, beauty, everyday moments of brilliant insight and wonder.The b...more
An excerpt from 'Break Blow Burn' can be found here: http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/p...
'Break Blow Burn' consists of 43 engaging close readings of important poems of the English-language canon, with a few surprises (including Joni Mitchell). Paglia the social provocateur recedes here to make room for Paglia the lover of language. 'Break Blow Burn' is a master class in poetry criticism and smarter than anything you are likely to hear from any UC, Harvard, or Yale professor in our age of pos...more
'Break Blow Burn' consists of 43 engaging close readings of important poems of the English-language canon, with a few surprises (including Joni Mitchell). Paglia the social provocateur recedes here to make room for Paglia the lover of language. 'Break Blow Burn' is a master class in poetry criticism and smarter than anything you are likely to hear from any UC, Harvard, or Yale professor in our age of pos...more
I'd said some rude things about Camille Paglia's reemergence as a regular columnist at Salon.com, berating her for basically wasting the opportunity to be smart about cultural and political issues by lavishing each form of self flattery. To court cliche, even Norman Mailer has more modesty. I haven't changed my mind, but I should mention her 2005 collection of poetry criticism, Break,Blow,Burn. It's the liveliest collection of critical remarks I've in years.Camile Paglia published her collection...more
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 well-preseented poem followed by three to five pages of thoughtful, extremely well written critique and commentary, including history, analysis, and politically fresh perspectives. Unlike other reviewers who...more
The first hurdle in reading Camille Paglia's book "Break Blow Burn" is in parsing the subtitle "Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems. "On looking at the table of contents, one will see that it is the English-speaking world which is represented in the book. These are poems originally written in English, so evidently "the World's Best Poems" include no translations, simply because, as Paglia explains in her introduction, "translation is so problematic." Ok, fine, but then the...more
Jun 18, 2008
Kevin Quinley
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
men comfortable reading a book adorned in pink
I am obliged to extend a virtual, Obama-style fist bump to Matt Drudge, whose eponymous online news compendium first directed me towards Ms. Paglia's biting commentary. Linking to a self-avowed feminist writing for the markedly un-Fox News like Salon.com should temper the disdainful treatment Drudge receives from college professors bemoaning the site as a conservative rag. Unfortunately, few of my professors possessed the unconventionally lucid perceptual toolkit afforded to Ms. Paglia, herself...more
A disappointment. I would have expected a writer as provocative as Camille to have afforded more insight into the poems chosen here. No argument with her selection, but her analyses didn't add a whole lot IMO.
added December 3rd, 2008 -
I was somewhat surprised at the Camille-love that seems to permeate other people's reviews of this book. I just don't see those penetrating insights. What I do see are relatively obvious points, articulated with supreme confidence and her signature dash of provoca...more
added December 3rd, 2008 -
I was somewhat surprised at the Camille-love that seems to permeate other people's reviews of this book. I just don't see those penetrating insights. What I do see are relatively obvious points, articulated with supreme confidence and her signature dash of provoca...more
It has taken me almost four months to work my way through this book. This is both a good and bad thing. The bad part is I can hardly remember what Paglia said about this first poems we "read" together. I could and should start over and I would learn lots more on a second reading. I am not ready to do that right now.
The good part about being slow with this book, is if I had rushed through it, I would not have learned anything. I would not have let the poems linger in my mind and on my tongue. Rea...more
The good part about being slow with this book, is if I had rushed through it, I would not have learned anything. I would not have let the poems linger in my mind and on my tongue. Rea...more
Camille Paglia takes the readers through her choice of the 44 most important poems in literary history. With each poem she provides a succinct and thoughtful essay about the meaning of the poem. I absolutely love her approach to explication because she doesn't "murder to dissect" as Wordsworth put it but she uses her ability to close read to provide a fuller deeper understanding of the poem. She is able to explain to more casual readers of poetry why certain poems are worth being immortalized.
I felt this book was a nice starting place for literary analysis of some of the more important poems in the English language. Paglia covers the "heavy hitters" - Shakespeare, Donne, Dickenson, and throws in her own picks, Joni Mitchell, Ralph Pomeroy. While the latter half of the book is filled with the Beats, and more modern poetry is virtually ignored, the book itself isn't bad. Gone is Paglia's caustic wit, this reads more like a classroom primer of some of these poems.
""Break, Blow, Burn"" resembles a poetry lecture series by a great college professor - which is what it actually is in fact. The book is a survey of Western poetry starting with Shakespeare and ending with Joni Mitchell (yes, that Joni Mitchell). Each poet is represented by a single poem and there are many great ones here, but it's Camille Paglia's commentary that provides the fireworks. Camille Paglia is an academic bomb thrower who is endlessly interesting and fun to read. Here she puts on dis...more
Paglia's poem choices get kind of strange (the book boldly ends with a Joni Mitchell song) and her habit of reading the poet's biography into the poems is not the kind of criticism I appreciate, but even so, this is a strong volume of great poems and great close readings of those poems. It helped me appreciate a few of the poems I already loved in new ways, and really, that's all we can ask from criticism.
I love this book so much I refuse to lend my copy to anyone. I've re-read it whole several times, and I constantly dip into it.
She introduced me to poems and poets I had never heard of, and made me understand and love more deeply the poets I thought I knew.
I felt like this book made me more aware and awake to the mysteries of life.
She introduced me to poems and poets I had never heard of, and made me understand and love more deeply the poets I thought I knew.
I felt like this book made me more aware and awake to the mysteries of life.
Jul 22, 2008
Jim
is currently reading it
Though I am slowly savoring my way through it, I can't resist saying a few words about this book. This is a delicious book. This is my kind of bathroom book. This is a wonderful read. in it, the controversial culture maven Camille Paglia takes 43 English language poems, and, one-by-one, gives them an insightful and entertaining "close reading." Only a few pages, 3-5 or so, are dedicated to each poem, so she has to make her points fast. And this she does. I love such a book, that gets into someon...more
This book features culture critic and observer Camille Paglia breaking open the depths of forty-three great poems from Shakespeare to the present... with deep insights and exposition. My full review is on my blog at Ennyman's Territory.
http://pioneerproductions.blogspot.co...
http://pioneerproductions.blogspot.co...
I totally respect Paglia. I enjoy her columns. This is the first book of hers that I've read, and it was very different from my expectations.
I know that I will never be able to read a poem and then talk about it like she does. Paglia takes the simplest phrase in the poem and links it Greco-Roman mythology, current pop culture, Wordworth, gay/lesbian/feminist theory, and everything in between - sometimes all in the review of one poem.
There is one poem of thirty words, only one of which is more t...more
I know that I will never be able to read a poem and then talk about it like she does. Paglia takes the simplest phrase in the poem and links it Greco-Roman mythology, current pop culture, Wordworth, gay/lesbian/feminist theory, and everything in between - sometimes all in the review of one poem.
There is one poem of thirty words, only one of which is more t...more
Not only is this book full of fantastic poems, it's incredibly useful. Paglia has a well written short essay to go with each poem that breaks it down and places it in the context of artistic movements. The poems are arranged chronologically, so you get a sense of the overall flow of English poetry over time.
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Camille Anna Paglia is an American social critic, author and teacher. Her book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, published in 1990, became a bestseller. She is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She has been variously called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist fe...more
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She has been variously called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist fe...more
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