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!

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

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!

Thanks for making this video. I bought Harold Bloom's "The Western Canon" book and I have been following along with the book on what to read in the canon. Also, I'm afraid of reading trash literature in the centuries,and thanks again for making a literary canon list to follow.

I love this approach that allows for personal connection. Greek and Greek-Australian poets are in my personal canon. George Seferis, Odysseas Elytis. They speak to my soul.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hello Adam! Though we only know each other through KZfaq, 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.

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.

Fantastic video!! Great advice!! ❤

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

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

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

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.

Great video👍 especially on reading as self-discovery.

Can’t wait for the list!!

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

Very beautyful video, thank you!

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

I like this video. You give good advice. Jeff

Thank you for this video and your advice!

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.

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

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.

Adam: you shouldn't beat yourself up for not currently being able to appreciate restoration era dramas... In my own experience, it seems that the older I get, the more my attention span seems to get depleted, lol....so, for example, I attempted watching your entire English lectures playlist last month; but then once I got annoyed by the poor video quality of your video on the Middle English period of the English language, I gave up. Long story short: the point of this comment is to encourage yourself, and any other person who reads this, to never succumb to self-doubt when it comes to one's passion for reading....so what if you never come to appreciate the restoration dramas? Everyone has their own interests; and there's nothing wrong with that. When I was a teenager, I read a LOT of books at a very quick pace. (I read a lot of Stephen King's novels, several by J.R.R. Tolkien, several by Jack Kerouac, and some philosophy books; by the time I was 17 I had finished reading the Bible. I only started appreciating poetry once I was in my mid-20's.) However, now that I read at a much slower pace; still, I refuse to allow that to derail my life-long education/reading goals. (I own Fagles' trilogy of the Illiad, the Odyessy, and the Aenied; I don't know if I'll ever possess the dedication to read them all from beginning to end, but at least they're there for me to thumb through random passages.) Adam: thanks for doing what you do! Also: I appreciate the shorter-form content of this video; please create some more videos of this length. Have a good day, my friend. (Although we've never met in real life, I still consider you a friend, LOL)

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