Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles

The great poems, plays, novels, stories teach us how to go on living. . . . Your own mistakes, accidents, failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can.So Harold Bloom, the most famous literary critic of his generation, exhorts readers of his last book: one that praises the sustaining power of poetry. "Passionate. . . . Perhaps Blooms most personal work, this is a fitting last testament to one of Americas leading twentieth-century literary minds."Publishers Weekly An extraordinary testimony to a long life spent in the company of poetry and an affecting last declaration of [Bloom's] passionate and deeply unfashionable faith in the capacity of the imagination to make the world feel habitableSeamus Perry, Literary Review "Reading, this stirring collection testifies, helps in staying alive.Kirkus Reviews, starred review This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate deathcompleted weeks before Harold Bloom diedshows how literature renews life amid what Milton called a universe of death. Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of lifes troubles, taking readers on a grand tour of the poetic voices that have haunted him through a lifetime of reading. High literature, he writes, is a saving lie against time, loss of individuality, premature death. In passages of breathtaking intimacy, we see him awake late at night, reciting lines from Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, Blake, Wordsworth, Hart Crane, Jay Wright, and many others. He feels himself edged by nothingness, uncomprehending, but still sustained by reading. Generous and cleareyed, this is among Harold Blooms most ambitious and most moving books.