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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. 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (January 24, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375725393
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375725395
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.63 x 8.05 inches
Reviewer: Gary Griffiths
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: "Breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head"
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Anthony J. Vetrano
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Camille Paglia's BREAK BLOW BURN
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Doc
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: a different approach and a very different list
Review: In a private high school, I wanted my students to love poetry, to look for poems, to value what they offer. As a result, I never required them to read poetry.I taught them how to write, using Strunk and White. We analyzed stories together, but I would roll off topic and recite poems: I usually begin by reciting the first stanza of Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper”.Poetry, great poetry makes us feel. Deeply truly passionately.You can only teach poetry by passionate reading, or better, by reciting. If you do not – yourself – truly understand the poem, you will not recite it well. When you recite a poem, students audiences know you love poetry – and now, so do they.Reading poems in class is why poetry is dying in culture. Most teachers – not being actors or competitive speakers – cannot read poems well. Too many teachers read Blake like they read their grocery list. No no no, in 34 words – I point out to students – Blake has summarized child labor, the breakup of British families, the tragic lives of the young and the horrors of the industrial revolution.You must love poems so much you want to memorize them.Waiting in a doctor’s office or on the gurney waiting for a cat scan, my go-to poem, the poem that helps me get through life’s difficulties, is Robert Graves’s “The Cool Web”. I recite poems in my mind all the time.I appreciate Dr. Paglia’s list; most of it is excellent. For Shakespeare, I would have chosen #30 and #116, but her notes are great. I was particularly impressed on Dr. Paglia’s notes on Frank O’Hara. However, I would not use any of her last 10 poets when you could use: e e cummings, “somewhere i have never traveled gladly beyond” – This has been my go-to poem for getting a woman’s attention. e e’s “anyone lived in a pretty howtown” is one of the best poems in English (One month, the year e e published “anyone lived in a pretty howtown”, e e received a royalty check of $.64).Never read poems. Recite them!Love the poem so much you can recite it with great feeling like John Berryman’s “Dream Song #40”. Go to YouTube and type in cazzjazz7. I also recite Wallace Stevens: “Anecdote of a Jar”, “The Domination of Black” and “On the Pleasures of Merely Circulating”. I love and recite parts of part II and part III from “East Coker”. Dr. Paglia doesn’t use Berryman or e e or Eliot or Graves or Pound or Frost or . . .I also recite one of my best poems: “Quarter Circle Lazy s Lazy t”, our family cattle brand in Montana. I won first place with Quarter Circle at the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. Nit and Wit published it in Chicago.No literate person,no one who wants to turn people on to poetry,can avoid the wonderful “Naming of Parts” by Henry Reed.Little by little – and I never required or even suggested students should write a poem – the poems came onto my desk – by the dozens. In the end, the students created a book of their poems, with one short story. Because they called me Doc, they came up with a title: “Hickory Dickory Doc”. One student had a mother at Temple radio; some of the poets went on the radio at Temple University and read their high school poems.And, I cannot choose O’Hara or Blackburn or Swenson et al when Paglia is leaving out Dylan Thomas: “Fern Hill” is fabulous - as is the lesser known “Lament”. “Lament” is badly neglected. I need a large room to recite that one. Audiences love that poem.Paglia left out the wonderful, tender, complex – “The River Merchant’s Wife” by Pound and his strong, hard-earned, harsh “Canto #81” in the Pisan Cantos.Annnd, leaving out “The Mirror” by Sylvia Plath is stunning.The greatest poem in English is “The Raven”. That poem hooked me at the age of ten, my first year as an actor in Summer Theater. Visit The Edgar Allan Poe National Historical Site in Philadelphia at 532 N. 7th Street. Poe lived there from 1838 to 1844. For years, when the phone wakes me up, I clear my voice on the way to the phone by reciting:“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—"

Reviewer: Solange Plath
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: what could be better for a lapsed english major like me--now up to ...
Review: a poetry class with an erudite no nonsense teacher--that you don't have to get up at 8 for and for which you are not graded! the lovely thing about this book is that it includes old favorites "batter my heart you three personed god" and some new more contemporary introductions. what could be better for a lapsed english major like me--now up to my eyeballs in soul destroying committee meetings?!it reminds me again why the humanities are essential, necessary, soul reviving. thank you dr paglia!

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great Book
Review: I needed it for my Rhetoric and Composition course, and I am enjoying it!

Reviewer: David Williams
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: poetry as it was meant to be
Review: PGLIA READS REAABLE POETRY, THE WAY A HUMANIST SHOULD, NOT SOME LANGUAGE TWISTER THAT EVEN THE WRITER CANNOT EXPLAIN,

Reviewer: Elizabeth B.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Smart and Succinct; No Shortage of ego, though.
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Fabio Veroneze
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: EBOOKE IMEDIATO ,UM SONHO!!!!

Reviewer: Steve M
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Paglia's insights "Batter my heart (...) and make me new."

Reviewer: Rand
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Reader
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Fabulous, brilliant! Everyone should own a copy!