Is Bloom a weak poet (I think I can call him a poet because he calls Nietzsche and Freud poets)? I didn’t know whether I was reading something by him or something by Vico, Freud and Burke. They must have been Bloom’s strong precursors, but did Bloom “creatively misread” them? I think it would have been difficult to repress these originations seeing as he quotes somebody else in every other line of his essay. And if he did intend to retain their great art, then he must be assuming that it is benefiting my “lesser mind” (332). I hope it did. “Who does the poet think he is, anyway?” (333)

The part I enjoyed of Bloom’s essay was when he refers to the text as “a psychic battlefield upon which authentic forces struggle for the only victory worth winning, the divinating triumph over oblivion” (332 1st sent.). Wouldn’t it be nice to triumph over oblivion by means of a psychic battle?

Any responses? After all…” Rhetoric can only be seconded by rhetoric, for all that rhetoric can intend is more rhetoric” (331).