Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles

The Power of a Reader's Mind over a Universe of Death

By: Harold Bloom

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.

This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate death - completed weeks before Harold Bloom died - shows how literature renews life amid what Milton called a universe of death. Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of life's troubles, taking listeners 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 clear-eyed, this is among Harold Bloom's most ambitious and most moving books.

©2020 Harold Bloom (P)2020 Recorded Books

Classical and Eternal

This book is a living and breathing testament to so much more than just poetry.
it's just something you have to swim through.
I really loved this, if I can ever find the time I will revisit again. I'll definitely use it as source material for my own writings.

It's content like this, that makes me wish I was eternal.

Culmination of Bloom’s Wisdom

An excellent selection interwoven with insightful and wise commentary. Easy to navigate with the chapter headings. Narration is well done.

Inspiring and enriching

Yet it is not a book for everyone, but the lucky few. I finished the listening of this 20 hours book in three or four days. This is one of five or six books by prof Bloom I listened. It is probably most ambitious and most impossible at once by the prof. For one, this was dictated and prepared while he was hospitalized and rehabbed at the tender age of 89. Prof bloom enlisted and analyzed the literary giants from Donte to Keats to Whitman and Yeats and Frost , and of course the bard himself whose play of hamlet supplies the title and probably muse.

Last not the least I want to thank Amazon makes freely available until 9/30