The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them

Stephanie Burt

Published by Harvard University Press 2016

The Poem Is You

60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them

Stephanie Burt

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674972896

Overview
Contents

About this book

Contemporary American poetry has plenty to offer new readers, and plenty more for those who already follow it. Yet its difficulty—and sheer variety—leaves many readers puzzled or overwhelmed. The critic, scholar, and poet Stephen Burt sets out to help. Beginning in the early 1980s, where critical consensus ends, Burt canvasses American poetry of the past four decades, from the headline-making urgency of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen to the stark pathos of Louise Glück, the limitless energy of Juan Felipe Herrera, and the erotic provocations of D. A. Powell.

The Poem Is You: Sixty Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them is a guide to the diverse magnificences of American poetry today. It presents a wide range of poems selected by Burt for this volume, each accompanied by an original essay explaining how a given poem works, why it matters, and how the poem speaks to other parts of art and culture. Included here are some classroom classics (by Ashbery, Komunyakaa, Hass), less famous poems by very famous poets (Glück, Kay Ryan), and poems by prizewinning poets near the start of their careers (such as Brandon Som), and by others who are not—or not yet—well known.

The Poem Is You will appeal to poets, teachers, and students, but it is intended especially for readers who want to learn more about contemporary American poetry but who have not known where or how to start. It describes what American poets have fashioned for one another, and what they can give us today.

Author / Editor information

Stephen Burt is Professor of English at Harvard University.

Reviews

It is refreshing to find a book that gives equal weight and relish to avant-garde minimalism, New Formalism, and so many of the stations in between…The poems Burt selects would alone comprise a valuable anthology of the American poetry of its time, and [she] is an entertaining, thought-provoking and eager guide to them, keen to ask all the questions that occur to [her] in [her] reading, and to engage with the chicanery of thought it engenders. Each essay is obviously a product of enjoyment, and encourages us to treat poems with the same enthusiasm—to embrace difficulty and difference in exchange for the articulate and involved pleasure that poetry, of all the arts, can best provide.
-- Rory Waterman Times Literary Supplement

[Burt] approaches a stunning variety of verse with the obsessiveness and knowledge of a scholar and a fan. Burt is an ideal guide for this trip through contemporary American poetry…Burt’s close readings are sharp and illuminating…The death of poetry has been proclaimed time and time again. But the sixty universes that Burt uncovers in these poems show us how alive poetry is, and how it needs to be read and appreciated for all its weirdness and cacophonous music…Whether you dip in and out of this book over months or read it all in a matter of days, it will help you pay better attention to the nuances, difficulties, identities, and music in American poetry…What comes through here is Burt's sheer, voracious love of contemporary poetry, and it's infectious. This book is a series of doors that all lead back to the poems themselves, and it will likely be used in classrooms across America. At least I hope so.
-- Gibson Fay-LeBlanc Bookforum

A fabulous guide…Each poem is introduced by an essay sketching out how it works, why it matters, how it speaks to the wider worlds of art and culture.
-- The Guardian

The Poem Is You is a collection of knowledgeable, useful and affectionately committed short essays on sixty recent poems by sixty American poets…[Burt writes with] unselfconscious erudition, light touch, even tone.
-- Caleb Klaces Poetry Review

Throughout, the style of Burt’s writing is as relaxed and inviting as its content is trenchant and learned. If the sheer capaciousness of contemporary American poetry is one of its defining features, Burt’s achievement here is to have been an enviably capacious critic, responding to the event of each poem in labile and unpredictable ways.
-- Benjamin Madden Australian Book Review

Drawing on endlessly deep wells of enthusiasm and acuity, The Poem Is You offers not so much a sequence of explanations as a series of invitations: Burt is more intent on describing how to think about a particular poem than on telling us what to think. Unpredictable yet unfailingly useful, The Poem Is You is a joyous book.
-- James Longenbach, author of The Virtues of Poetry

This is a splendid book. Many critics and poets have published essays or reviews of contemporary poetry, but Burt is doing something else here. She lavishes the poems with extraordinarily nimble, alert, luminous attention. It’s hard to think of a better introduction to contemporary American poetry.
-- Jahan Ramazani, author of Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres

Poet and critic Burt’s ambitious anthology of recent poems by American authors, from 1981 to 2015, creates a coherent body of work out of the vast landscape of recent American poetry. Burt’s 60 selections are eclectic, mingling instantly recognizable names (John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich) with newer talents (Lucia Perillo, Claudia Rankine.)…Burt’s many ways of looking at a poem will inspire new students and accomplished poets, especially as many of [her] meditations circle the question of what poetry does, or should do: making readers pay attention, ask questions, and experience new things. Burt’s formidable breadth of knowledge about the practice of poetry, from Virgil up to 2015, allows [her] to make nimble connections among authors and establish an ars poetica for current American lyric poetry, an impressive feat given the diverse selection just within this book.
-- Publishers Weekly

[Burt’s] critique is not only accessible to most all readers, but it also shows [her] depth of knowledge and love of American poetry. [Her] essays are very good at finding the meaning of the work while placing each poem in context within the landscape of poetry…This book is for anyone interested in the state of American poetry today.
-- Jeremy Spencer Library Journal

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Paradoxes and Oxymorons (1981) John Ashbery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
Tito Madera Smith (1981) Tato Laviera Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	22
Th e Ride (1982) Richard Wilbur Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
My Dream About The Second Coming (1982 / 1987) Lucille Clifton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
Possession (1982) Carla Harryman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
Songs & Sonnets (1983) John Hollander Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
More Music (1984 / 1985) Carl Dennis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
Saxophone (1984) Liam Rector Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Incantation (1984) Czesław Miłosz, Robert Pinsky and Czesław Miłosz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
Shoe from the Waves (1984) Robert Grenier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
Lightnin’ Blues (1986) Rita Dove Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
Target (1987) A. R. Ammons Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
Facing It (1987 / 1988) Yusef Komunyakaa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
Hamatawk (1988 / 1991) Diane Glancy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
Domestic Mysticism Lucie Brock-Broido Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
Above the Inland Empire today (1989) Killarney Clary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
Modern Love (1989) John Yau Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
Oh (1990) Robert Creeley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
December Journal (1990) Charles Wright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
The Piano Player Explains Himself (1991) Allen Grossman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
An Atlas of the Diffi cult World XIII (Dedications) (1991) Adrienne Rich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	126
Lamium (1992) Louise Glück Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
Self- Portrait in Tyvek^TM Windbreaker (1992 / 1995) James Merrill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Salt (1993 / 1996) Linda Gregerson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Emptiness (1993) Kay Ryan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
“A Wooden Eye. An 1884 Silver Dollar. A Homemade Explosive. A Set of False Teeth. And a 14- Karat Gold Ashtray” (1995 / 1998) Albert Goldbarth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	158
Honey Jars of Hair (1995) Harryette Mullen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
Halley’s Comet (1995) Stanley Kunitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Letters to Zanzotto: Letter 3 (1995) Michael Palmer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
Our Lady of the Snows (1996) Robert Hass Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Key Episodes from an Earthly Life (1996) C. D. Wright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Blood on the Wheel (1999) Juan Felipe Herrera Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	192
A Song Th at We Still Sing (2001) Carter Revard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	200
Epigraph (2001) Allan Peterson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Our Nature (2001) Rae Armantrout Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Race (2001) Elizabeth Alexander Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
A / ppeal A / pple A / dam A / dream (2002) Liz Waldner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
>> > >> > >> PLEASE FORWARD & > >> (2003) Kari Edwards Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	228
Tonight (1996 / 2003) Agha Shahid Ali Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
[when he comes he is neither sun nor shade: a china doll] (2004) D. A. Powell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	240
Sans Serif Angie Estes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
To the Wires Overhead (2005 / 2007) W. S. Merwin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	250
On Sleep (2005) Bernadette Mayer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Moab (2005 / 2007) Donald Revell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
The Blue Terrance (2006) Terrance Hayes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	268
Futures (2007 / 2008) Jorie Graham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	274
Miss Weariness (2007) Laura Kasischke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	282
Song of the Mortar and Pestle (2008) Frank Bidart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	288
Lustron: The House America Has Been Waiting For (2008) Robyn Schiff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
Q Is for the Quick (2009) Mary Jo Bang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Viagra (2009) Lucia Perillo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	308
The Work horse (2010) Melissa Range Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	314
Prescription (2011) Joseph Massey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	320
Date: Post Glacial (2012) Nanouk Okpik Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
Class (2012) Rosa Alcalá Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	330
Oversized T-Shirts (2012 / 2013) Gabby Bess Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	336
Hide-and-Seek with God (2012) Brenda Shaughnessy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	343
You and your partner go to see the film (2014) Claudia Rankine Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	348
Oulipo (2014) Brandon Som Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	354
Weeping (2015) Ross Gay Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	362
Sources Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	371
Further Reading Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	393
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	397
Credits Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	399
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	407

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 390

eBook

Published: September 12, 2016
ISBN: 9780674972896