Reading ...

I'm reading two interesting books just now. Robert Duncan's _The H.D. Book_ and Harold Bloom's _The Anatomy of Influence_. Each is a deeply personal book about reading poetry.

The Anatomy of influence : literature as a way of life / Harold Bloom. New Haven : Yale University Press, c2011.

The H.D. book / Robert Duncan ; edited and with an introduction by Michael Boughn and Victor Coleman. Berkeley : University of California Press, c2011.

Both are deeply personal books about the transformative experience of reading (and talking about or writing about) poetry. Each author speaks of his own experience as a reader in a way that is fully autobiographical or confessional. I like that about each book.

Each of these books reminds me of a book I read a couple of weeks ago: Eavan Boland's _A Journey with two maps_. Also a deeply personal book about reading poetry (and about writing poetry.)

A Journey with two maps : becoming a woman poet / Eavan Boland. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2011.

Obviously, I am following a thematic interest of my own in finding such books and reading them. But only Boland's book is clearly advertised as a memoir, and half of it is critical readings of a dozen poets. The others surprised me with their intimacy. Happy surprise.

Another surprise, Bloom's is far more readable that I had expected (after reading his _Anxiety of Influence_ and others in that series.) Duncan's is the more idiosyncratically allusive and cryptic. No surprise there.