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

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

 

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

She flies as high as you can go. . . . Bold and convincing. . . . Exemplary. . . . A rich book.

-The New York Times Book Review

The chapter on Sylvia Plath's ‘Daddy’ will take the top of your head off -James Wolcott

“As entertaining as it is dazzingly erudite, Break, Blow, Burn is capable of re-energizing any reader's engagement with poetry.

-Francine du Plessix Gray, The Week

I hope a lot of people read this book. . . . There wasn't a commentary where I didn’t learn something about the poem in question, no matter how familiar the poem was. -Philip Marchand, Toronto Star

It will have students storming the walls of tomorrow's English departments, mad for poetry again. -St. Petersburg Times

Dazzling. . . . Bursts with her ingenuity. . . . Brilliant insights . . . permeate the book. . . . Readers receive a marvelous education.

-Rocky Mountain News

 

Paglia's vision is always fresh. . . . She makes a fascinating and challenging reading companion. These essays will inspire anyone to turn back to poetry again. -The Times (London)

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Synopsis:

Camille Paglia is University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She is the

Synopsis:

An iconoclastic intellectual and author of Sexual Personae celebrates the great poetry of the Western tradition as she looks at diverse works by poets ranging from Shakespeare and Dickinson to Plath, Hughes, and other unconventional poets. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

Synopsis:

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.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

1. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73

2. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

3. William Shakespeare, The Ghost's Speech

4. John Donne, “The Flea”

5. John Donne, Holy Sonnet I

6. John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV

7. George Herbert, “Church-monuments”

8. George Herbert, “The Quip”

9. George Herbert, “Love”

10. Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”

11. William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”

12. William Blake, “London”

13. William Wordsworth, “The World Is Too Much with Us”

14. William Wordsworth, “Composed upon Westminster Bridge”

15. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”

16. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”

17. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

18. Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”

19. Emily Dickinson, “Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers”

20. Emily Dickinson, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society”

21. William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”

22. William Butler Yeats, “Leda and the Swan”

23. Wallace Stevens, “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock”

24. Wallace Stevens, “Anecdote of the Jar”

25. William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”

26. William Carlos Williams, “This Is Just to Say”

27. Jean Toomer, “Georgia Dusk”

28. Langston Hughes, “Jazzonia”

29. Theodore Roethke, “Cuttings”

30. Theodore Roethke, “Root Cellar”

31. Theodore Roethke, “The Visitant”

32. Robert Lowell, “Man and Wife”

33. Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

34. Frank O’Hara, “A Mexican Guitar”

35. Paul Blackburn, “The Once-Over”

36. May Swenson, “At East River”

37. Gary Snyder, “Old Pond”

38. Norman H. Russell, “The Tornado”

39. Chuck Wachtel, “A Paragraph Made Up of Seven Sentences”

40. Rochelle Kraut, “My Makeup”

41. Wanda Coleman, “Wanda Why Aren’t You Dead?”

42. Ralph Pomeroy, “Corner”

43. Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”

Biographical Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Permissions

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780307425096
Publisher:
Vintage Books
Subject:
Literary Criticism : Poetry
Author:
Paglia, Camille
Author:
Camille Paglia
Author:
<i>Sex, Art, and American Culture</i
Subject:
Poetry : English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Subject:
Poetry
Subject:
English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Subject:
American poetry
Subject:
English poetry
Subject:
Literary Criticism : General
Subject:
Literary Criticism-Poetry Criticism
Subject:
main_subject
Subject:
all_subjects
Publication Date:
20060124
Binding:
ELECTRONIC
Language:
English
Pages:
247
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Related Subjects

» Fiction and Poetry » Anthologies » United Kingdom » Poetry
» Fiction and Poetry » Poetry » A to Z
» Humanities » Literary Criticism » General

Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems
0 stars - 0 reviews
$ In Stock
Product details 247 pages Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group - English 9780307425096 Reviews:
"Synopsis" by , Camille Paglia is University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She is the
"Synopsis" by , An iconoclastic intellectual and author of Sexual Personae celebrates the great poetry of the Western tradition as she looks at diverse works by poets ranging from Shakespeare and Dickinson to Plath, Hughes, and other unconventional poets. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.
"Synopsis" by , 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.
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