Stevie in Camile Paglia's Book

[aleuzzi]

Hello there. I usually don't come to the Stevie Forum (though I love her). I felt, however, I should when I was reading the "Introduction" to Camile Paglia's new book "Break, Blow, Burn: Camile Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems." I'll quote the entire paragraph in which Stevie Nicks is mentioned:

"My advice to the reader approaching a poem is to make the mind still and blank. Let the poem speak. This charged quiet mimics the blank space ringing the printed poem, the nothing out of which something takes shape. Many critics counsel memorizing poetry, but that has never been my habit. To commit a poem to memory is to make the act of reading superfluous. But I believe the immersion in and saturation by the poem, so that the next time we meet it we have the thrill of recognition. We feel (to quote singer Stevie Nicks) the hauntingly familiar. It's akin to addiction or to the euphoria of being in love."


Best,
Tony