Camille Paglia February 8, 2006

CAMILLE PAGLIA discusses BREAK, BLOW, BURN, poetry, and the state of our culture in general. The incomparable and provocative Camille Paglia - recently named one of the world's top 100 intellectuals by Foreign Policy and Prospect - brings her critical acumen to some of the great poems of the Western tradition in her latest book, a love letter to the art of poetry, her call for a renewal of poetry's importance in contemporary culture, and a vibrant educational text for the general reader. To make Paglia's list, a selected poem had to be "strong enough, as an artifact, to stand up to all the great poems that preceded it." Poetry, Paglia writes, "develops the imagination and feeds the soul." Subtitled "Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems", the erudite and enlightening entries in BREAK, BLOW, BURN also feed the soul.