I have a friend at Princeton who’s an economics major, and I’m sending him a copy of “Break, Blow, Burn.” If anyone can convince him that poetry’s value shouldn’t be measured by its impact on the GDP, it’s Camille Paglia, the university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia .

Paglia’s collection of “forty-three of the world’s best poems” in English, each paired with a brief critical essay, has all the passion and eloquence of the volume’s title. The phrase “break, blow, burn” is drawn from a sonnet by the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, but here it has a decidedly contemporary ring.

The collection as a whole strikes a similar balance: the set of poems Paglia has chosen is definitely canonical (yes, plenty of dead white men), but her criticism is accessible and engaging.

It can be difficult to articulate to my economist friend exactly what makes a poem I love a great poem. That’s what Paglia does here. She has the patience and mastery to work slowly through each poem, explaining what the lines mean and analyzing their effects. Paglia’s approach is simple without being simplistic. From Shakespeare to Dickinson to Yeats to Plath, her criticism is readable and flawlessly done.

At the same time, “Break, Blow, Burn” may function best as an introductory text. Poetry aficionados will admire the elegant economy with which Paglia lays out the central moves of each work. If there is a famous poem that a reader has never particularly enjoyed—for me, it was Wallace Stevens’ “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock”—Paglia’s analysis will help the reader understand its merits. But, while her analysis will unquestionably enrich a reader’s understanding of an already-beloved work, it may not advance it to the next level.

This is not to say that Paglia’s essays don’t contain important and novel insights. She notes the subtle interplay of themes and images between different poems, and seamlessly integrates historical context and contemporary allusion. Her discussion of the fallen tyrant in Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” for instance, touches on the resonance of the poem in post-Napoleonic Europe, as well as noting that “modern readers may find the clarity of conception and execution of ‘Ozymandias’ especially compelling because Shelley’s technique resembles that of the motion picture camera.”

Paglia’s comparisons of poems and visual art are particularly effective. The colors in “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” she writes, conjure the rich hues of a Gauguin painting, a comparison that reinforces the tension in the poem between the puritanical world in which Stevens lives and the lush creativity of his imagination.

But in the two-to-four pages of analysis that Paglia allots to each poem, she can only accomplish so much. “Break, Blow, Burn” is a fun and smart read, but poetry lovers may prefer to delve into more focused criticism.

Those who read “Break, Blow, Burn,” and appreciate Paglia’s wit and panache, however, may find themselves wishing she had written a slightly different book. Paglia’s passionate defense of the poems she loves is worthwhile, but a passionate attack on the poetry she considers overrated would have been irresistible.

It would also have been illuminating. Paglia’s decided opinions about what makes a poem great inform her analysis in “Break, Blow, Burn,” and she devotes a few pages to her poetic philosophy in her introduction. But the greatness of almost all the poems she discusses here is uncontroversial, so her viewpoint does not emerge as clearly as it could.

This seems to limit the book because Paglia has such a unique perspective to offer. Always willing to take a controversial stance in her political and cultural commentary, Paglia is also uncompromising in her aesthetic judgments. She conspicuously—and, she said, purposefully—did not include the works of respected poets like Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Seamus Heaney in her anthology (see the Sidebar). Hearing her reasons for their exclusion is important. Her analysis of 43 of the world’s most overrated poems would be delightful, infuriating, and a required read for anyone who cares about poetry today.

I’ll send “Break, Blow, Burn” to my friend at Princeton. But I want a sequel—a principled, no-holds-barred polemic—for myself.

—Reviewer Lois E. Beckett can be reached at lbeckett@fas.harvard.edu.
—Read the profile of Paglia too.

Break, Blow, Burn
By Camille Paglia
Vintage
Out Now