[New-Poetry] Paglia's Broken Blow

[Anny Ballardini]

This is so well said! Bombastic pleasure, yes, I agree.

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 4:20 PM, David Graham <GRAHAMD at ripon.edu> wrote:

> It can be difficult to admire Camille Paglia, because she's so busy
> admiring herself.  Nevertheless, *Break, Blow, Burn* is well worth a look,
> and so is her essay on the selection process she went through in writing it.
>  Here's the link again if you've lost it:
> *
> *
> *http://www.bu.edu/arion/Paglia16-2.html*
>
> Paglia likes to make sweeping provocative declarations, and I think she's
> frequently full of crap.  Her taste strikes me as just as limited as, say,
> Helen Vendler's.  But unlike many critics, she's also willing to do the
> heavy-lifting of close reading.  *Break, Blow, Burn* is a book to savor,
> argue with, bounce off of.  I also like it that she's willing to name names
> and take potshots at what she feels are inflated reputations and silly
> academic orthodoxies.
>
> Her backstage essay on reading for her book is fascinating.  I mean, she
> reports being unable to find a *single* good short poem by Pound, Auden,
> Moore, Creeley, Levertov, Jarrell, Rukeyser, Duncan, Berryman, Ashbery,
> Rich, Kinnell, or Bishop!  That's rather breathtaking.  Nor was she able to
> locate a single good poem on sports, which strikes me as ludicrous, given
> the work of, say, Robert Francis, May Swenson, and William Matthews.
>
> Her close readings of poems that *almost* made the cut are most intriguing.
>  I was a bit puzzled by many pronouncements and decisions.  For instance,
> she bypassed Frank O'Hara's "Lana Turner Has Collapsed" for a lesser-known
> piece, "A Mexican Guitar," which I did not immediately recall. When I
> checked out that poem I just scratched my head.  It's a very interesting
> O'Hara poem, but for a general reader?  It would be most baffling,
> especially as compared to the Lana Turner poem.  Paglia typically gives no
> real reason for her preference, and is sketchy on what constitutes a good
> poem for general readership, beyond noting that Yeats's "Second Coming" was
> her model:  "a masterpiece of sinewy modern English."
>
> Ultimately, Paglia seems best at nuts-and-bolts examinations of single
> poems, and least convincing when she starts to generalize.  She also reminds
> me frequently of Robert Frost's remark about never venturing forth unless
> mounted firmly on your prejudices. . . .
>
>
> ========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
>
> Home Page:
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>
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-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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