You know that feeling when you do a few pushups, look in the mirror, and that small wave of misplaced confidence briefly washes over you?

Reading a good poem kinda has the same effect on your brain. The gears start cranking, and your ego gets a little boost. For a fleeting moment, you’re a literary genius, capable of decoding even the most enigmatic Shakespearean sonnets.

Alas, reading one poem obviously isn’t going to instill any sort of permanent chemical change in your brain. But ingesting forty three of history’s finest back-to-back? That’ll get you a lot closer to becoming the elitist poetry snob that you’ve always secretly dreamt of becoming.

“Poets have glimpses of other realities, higher or lower, which can’t be fully grasped cognitively. The poem is a methodical working out of fugitive impressions. It finds or rather projects symbols into the inner and outer worlds. Poets speak even when they know their words will be swept away by the wind.” –Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn could just as easily have been published under the title Classic Poetry for Dummies. Featuring a meticulously curated selection of masterworks ranging in authorship from Wordsworth to Joni Mitchell, it’s a who’s who of Western poetry, sorted chronologically from the 16th century all the way to the 20th. Each poem is accompanied by a lengthy “explication of text” – per the author’s words – that dives into the seemingly intangible factors that make them great. And sure, Paglia’s poetic know-all can come off as a bit haughty, even pretentious at times. But I suppose that’s inevitable for anyone who spends that much time quoting Shakespeare.

Break Blow Burn is this week’s Sunday night read, a “greatest hits” style compilation of classic poetry designed as the average joe’s introduction to the age-old art of playing with words.