BREAK BLOW BURN CAMILLE PAGLIA 2005 First Edition Hardcover,DJ EX CONDITION

Description: CAMILLE PAGLIA Hardcover BREAK, BLOW, BURN First Edition and First Printing Nice copy of this first edition and first printing Camille Paglia hardcover book. A little wear on the dust jacket but the inside is nice and clean. America’s most provocative intellectual brings her blazing powers of analysis to the most famous poems of the Western tradition—and unearths some previously obscure verses worthy of a place in our canon. Combining close reading with a panoramic breadth of learning, Camille Paglia sharpens our understanding of poems we thought we knew, from Shakespeare to Dickinson to Plath, and makes a case for including in the canon works by Paul Blackburn, Wanda Coleman, Chuck Wachtel, Rochelle Kraut—and even Joni Mitchell. Daring, riveting, and beautifully written, Break, Blow, Burn is a modern classic that excites even seasoned poetry lovers—and continues to create generations of new ones. ー “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) ー Reader Reviews: 5.0 out of 5 stars "Breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head" 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. ー 5.0 out of 5 stars Camille Paglia's BREAK BLOW BURN Camille Paglia's BREAK BLOW BURN contains a brilliant interpretation of forty-three of the world's best poems. Written with great clarity of expression, this study reflects once again Paglia's tremendous breadth of learning. I highly recommend Camille Paglia's BREAK BLOW BURN to anyone who is interested in understanding the meaning, structure and beauty of the poems selected by this provocative intellectual. ー

Price: 30 USD

Location: North Hollywood, California

End Time: 2025-01-08T05:21:51.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5.5 USD