How to Build Your Own Canon | Q&A

[@victoria9663]

This is one of the best talks or pieces of advice about reading that I have ever heard! I'm saving it to watch again. C.S. Lewis was also my first introduction to the "arrows of joy" you're talking about. It was such a relief reading Surprised by Joy and realizing I wasn't alone in my experience! (Also I am from Louisiana and the same age as you, gathering from your description of how old you were during Katrina 😆)

[@DyarContreras]

Adam: your bit about your mystical childhood experiences in the woods of Louisiana resonated with me. I grew up in the Sierra Nevada mountains of eastern Fresno county, California; and I too, had mystical/religious experiences in the woods. Thank you for reminding me of what makes life worth living: to contemplate the ineffable. Cheers!

[@Tonal.Harmony]

I am almost in tears as I listened to you explain the mystical/transcendental experience you had in nature. For my entire life I’ve been timid of trying to explain and talk about this. I grew up in Costa Rica and Texas, and the experiences of jogging g in the rain and sitting in the woods on a clear sunny day have brought in those transcendental moments. As a premise, I am a young-earth creationist. So, the transcendental, mystical experiences have both moved me personally, but also compelled me into deep reverence and worship toward God.

[@leilastackleather9927]

Well said. Me, too.

[@queenofdaydreams3825]

I'm not a classic literature enjoyer, but you make it seem accessible :)

[@РоманПаляниця-к5э]

Very interesting, meaningful and useful video, thank you! Greetings from Ukraine! Right now there is an air raid and I am watching your video. Your video gives meaning to life.

[@nathanhassallpoetry]

Some poems WILL strike. Love it. I had that more recently with W.B. Yeat's poem "Sailing to Byzantium," and Rilke's "Bowl of Roses." I go back over and over. The Frost quote you shared is great, too on "the immortal wound." Keep up the great work.

[@thomassimmons1950]

Adam, mate...though separated by age, and a bit by geography (St. Louis) mostly, your experience of the motivation to read, and more particularly, to read to understand the ineffable, made me think back to when, after a divorce at 30, reading mostly non fiction: history, philosophy, politics, etc. I was walking down a rainy St. Louis, October street, and was struck with how I'd been hunting the wrong game. That life wasn't a rational proposition necessarily. It was then I leaned into poetry and fiction generally. For what it's worth, here's my top ten...after all these years: Shakespeare Beckett TS Eliot Emily Dickinson Whitman Gerard Manley Hopkins Bukowski Harold Pinter Sam Shepard - David Mamet I never remarried, though I did read a lot more...Cheers!

[@HERObyPROXY]

Your thoughts on the canon, as well as the essays by Lewis and others that you mentioned on your other video on the topic, has inspired me to consciously form my own canon. I began the process a few years ago, bringing together works of literature encountered throughout my life together in my personal library only to be struck by a kind of imposter syndrome - the doubt that what I was undertaking was not up to ‘proper literary standards.’ Now, I won’t let self-doubt hold me back from the self-forming work of personal canon formation.

[@AliChaitani-q2l]

Hello Adam! Though we only know each other through KZbin, I can’t help but call you a friend. Your work on here has helped kindle a long-lost proclivity for literature. On the topic of canons, I have in mine from Whitman: And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful. And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful, And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is just as wonderful. And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful.

[@wildsonnets]

Most conversations about the canon center on the perspective of the reader who is working to compile or receive a list of the best writing a language or culture has produced. It is a daunting but fulfilling task. For me, as a writer and poet, the question is always - how can I produce work that is worthy of such an ancestry as this? How can I deliver experiences that are shaped by an expansive devotion to technique, while sharing in unique modes of expression a variety of feelings and realizations that are common to us all regardless of age, gender, color or creed? I am getting ready to publish my seventh book of Wild Sonnets, taking my own literary adventure to the next milestone of the 700th poem. It is not for me to say that this body of work will ever be included in anyone’s canon. But I consider my practice to be guided by the best of those who have written before me, and hope those who read me now will believe these efforts deserve to be shared with the generations to come. Thanks, Adam, for this channel. It is a delight to have literature discussed with such concentrated intelligence.

[@EyeLean5280]

Thank you so much for continuing on this topic. I'm very much looking forward to your canon.

[@thenewunderground8692]

Just prior to you mentioning C.S. Lewis I was remarking to myself how much your words reminded me of Surprised by Joy!

[@jsc0625]

This was really interesting, thank you! I honestly have had the completely wrong idea of what a canon is in my mind haha, so this was helpful. Definitely made it less intimidating and is something I will keep in mind as I read

[@leilastackleather9927]

I love this idea of creating my own canon. I hadn’t realized this was what I’ve been doing all along. Thank you. 🙏 This morning I read a poem by Friedrich Holderlin. “When I Was a Boy…” So beautiful, resonating, made me weepy. I love your personal anecdotes.

[@closereadingpoetry]

Ah, I like Holderlin. It was Novalis for me ... the Hymns to the Night!

[@leilastackleather9927]

@@closereadingpoetry I’m reading about Novalis’ life. I hope to explore his poetry soon. Thank you for sharing.

[@leilastackleather9927]

Could you recommend a definitive text of his works, and perhaps a biography?

[@closereadingpoetry]

@@leilastackleather9927 Yes! The small green clothbound hardback "Novalis" of the Twayne's World Author Series #556 by John Neubauer.

[@closereadingpoetry]

@@leilastackleather9927 There is no definitive English translation of his whole works, but the definitive collection is "Novalis Werke" published by München: Beck in the Beck's kommentierte Klassiker series.

[@joelharris4399]

I highly recommend reading the original 1949 Oxford University Press Gilbert Highet's The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature as a sound foundation in navigating the Western Canon waters. There's nothing quite like it to-date, in terms of the prose style, scholastic scope, your attention to the subtleties and nuances of Greek and Latin and how they proved indispensable in setting into motion the emergence of new languages in Europe.

[@nathanhassallpoetry]

Thank you for posting this. Added to my ever growing reading list. Thanks!

[@eightiefiv3]

Fantastic video!! Great advice!! ❤

[@sb5421]

I have a similar experience to yours, a lot of time in nature as a child, although my spiritual awakening was triggered by reading rather than the other way around. Particularly important to me were the sonnets of Shakespeare, which can be read in many ways. Now, it is my goal to write and to pass my experience on to others.

[@joegoddard8992]

Thanks as always for the great video - and what a wonderful essay. thanks for sharing.

[@VincentRoberts-f1z]

Great video👍 especially on reading as self-discovery.

[@sunjaikim9178]

Can’t wait for the list!!

[@timgilbert6624]

I enjoyed this video a lot and it seems like great advice. I do wonder whether you have wound up talking about something other than a canon, though, since everybody winds up with their own personal version of it and no two versions are the same. Or are you talking about trawling through a pre-selected list of poets, rather than poetry at large? But in that case you aren't developing your own personal canon so much as a subset of an existing canon. It's also interesting to imagine what would have happened if you had wound up with someone besides C. S. Lewis as your starting point into the giant graph of poets and their influences, like, say, Wallace Stevens or Sylvia Plath. (I suppose you can get back to Lewis through Eliot for just about anybody post-1914 though.)

[@psychbookman8613]

Adam, this was excellent, thank you. As we await the release and discussion of the large canon you've compiled, it made me wonder whether in fact there is such a thing as a singular canon. Or, as I believe you're suggesting, there are as many canons as there are "big questions" which humans grapple with. In which case, should a definitive anthology or master canon best be construed as a compilation of works which address the most common of these big questions? Interested in others' thoughts.

[@xddudinha]

Thank you for the video, it really helped me to structure my studies

[@helenitahurtado]

Very beautyful video, thank you!

[@Be_Leafer]

Thank you for this video and your advice!

[@williamfahey6066]

I like this video. You give good advice. Jeff

[@geoffreycanie4609]

I hope there was no backlash against this from Restoration Drama bros.😊

[@jamesduggan7200]

Thanks; btw the very brief cv helped explain how that strange mark was left. The tbh I found the comparison between canon reading and trawling for fish a little uncomfortable.

[@gcummings88]

The cannon is apocalyptic. There can be nothing new. Its over. Now the educated person is a archivest.

[@Arjmm]

Nonsense

[@BenjaminRedwood]

Apocalyptic in the Kermodian sense, certainly… I think it’s actually more a case of “the canon is dead; long live the canon”.

[@austinquick6285]

Nah it’s not over. It’s just taking a hiatus.