I was reading The Anxeity of Influence while my students took an exam and got to thinking. It's such a useful concept--apart from the fact I can't stand Bloom's writing and many other things about the book. In other words, I have an anxiety of influence about the anxiety of influence. Margarita, a student from Spain who's come to work with me for a few months on her dissertation, has found it useful, though in her case it is a question of a weak poet with weak misreadings of much stronger poets. My Apocryphal Lorca is a Bloomian book, en el fondo y hasta cierto punto.

I know Rothenberg wrote about Bloom as the angel of death, deciding who gets in the canon and who doesn't. But when I turn to Rothenberg's reading of Lorca, isn't it just a weak misreading of a strong poet? It's hard to avoid that conclusion: it just stares you in the face.

Here's the thing: it is hard for me to avoid the idea that certain poets matter more than others. You feel that with Bloom, that he gets that. Of course, this all depends on a prior sense that poetry itself matters. You feel that in the writing of Bloom, Vendler, and Perloff, despite their differences. There's an intensity there. I also feel that it's worthwhile to be a strong critic. I am self-aware enough to know it's also a little ridiculous; as Sibelius said, nobody ever erected a statue of a critic. That keeps it in perspective a little.

One thing I've always thought is that criticism should be at the level of the poetry it's about. Bloom knew that, even if we judge his own criticism not at that level. In other words, you have to bring all the erudition, critical intelligence, and poetic culture at the most profound level that you can muster.