Poetry Friday--Break, Blow, Burn

There's nothing like a bright pink cover to grab your attention! Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems [821.009 PAG] did just that--it jumped out and grabbed me with its pinkness. Fortunately, what is inside the book went on to hold my attention.

Each of the 43 poems is accompanied by several pages of Camille Paglia's explanation of what is going on in the poem. Even a very short poem such as the one below, has more than two pages of commentary! The biggest advantage to the book is that Paglia not only includes old chestnuts such as "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams, which many students have to analyze, but it also has several relatively unknown contemporary poems.

My Makeup
by Rochelle Kraut

on my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers

on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage

for lipstick
I wear my lips

Head over to A Teaching Life where Tara is rounding up the Poetry Friday offerings for this week.