Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence

After a generation characterized by psycho-criticism and the New Criticism, Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence must have come to its first readers as a balm. Bloom argues that new poems originate mainly from old poems; that the primary struggle of the young poet is against the old masters. He, the ephebe, must “clear imaginative space” (1) for himself through a creative misreading of the strong poets of the past. Only strong poets can overcome this anxiety of influence; lesser lights become derivative flatterers and never achieve poetic immortality for themselves.