Living with Legends

Lipstick academic Camille Paglia has come out with a new “book” in which she critiques the forty-three greatest poems in English literature.  Excuse me, but didn’t her fellow blowhard Harold Bloom come out with something similar a few years back?  Something about the hundred works of literature that all literate humans must read?  Then, as now, the stated purpose is to educate the unwashed masses as to the timeless values of literature/poetry.  Then, as now, the real purpose is to incite controversy among academics and intellectuals.  Or maybe it’s just to turn lecture notes into cash.

Paglia wants people to get worked up over the fact that their favorite poems and/or poets were left off the list.  I’m playing into her hands, I know, but OK, I’ll bite.  She neglects several Chelsea poets, including: Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and Bob Dylan.  Leonard Cohen fails to make her list because, apparently, she believes his work to be unknown in the U.S.  (So, no “Famous Blue Raincoat.”)  She does include Joni Mitchell, though not of course “Chelsea Morning”, but rather “Woodstock”.

I guess I shouldn’t be complaining, since at least one Chelsea poet makes the list, but it just seems rather odd: Joni Mitchell rather than Ginsberg?  “Woodstock” rather than “Howl”?

“Woodstock” is a pretty good song, one of my favorites, actually, but great poetry?  Get real, Camille.  Here are the first few lines of “Howl”:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving

hysterical naked,

Dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking for

an angry fix…

Paglia describes this poem as “…garish, stagey, hammy.”  As opposed to:

            We are stardust, we are golden,

            We are billion year old carbon.

            And we’ve got to get ourselves

            Back to the garden.

I’m missing something, apparently.  I guess you had to have been there.

(Paglia’s book, Break Blow Burn, actually came out last year, reputedly sparking controversy, but I just didn’t notice until now.) (Source:Tronto Star)