Stephanie Burt
Author of Don't Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems
About the Author
Image credit: Harvard University Department of English
Works by Stephanie Burt
All-Season Stephanie 3 copies
Associated Works
Pretty Bitches: On Being Called Crazy, Angry, Bossy, Frumpy, Feisty, and All the Other Words That Are Used to Undermine… (2020) — Contributor — 70 copies
McSweeney's Issue 49 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern): Cover Stories (2017) — Contributor — 56 copies
Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin (2021) — Contributor — 3 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Burt, Steph
Burt, Stephen (former name) - Birthdate
- 1971
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- Washington, D.C., USA
Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Education
- Harvard University
Yale University (PhD) - Occupations
- literary critic
poet
professor
Members
Reviews
Lists
99 (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 17
- Also by
- 10
- Members
- 457
- Popularity
- #53,730
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 8
- ISBNs
- 32
- Favorited
- 1
But I was never fond of poetry and hence avoided it nearly completely. Now I found, decades later, that I was entering virgin territory for me. Those broken lines that always looked like gibberish to me apparently have a much deeper meaning and are constructing using forms involving technical jargon such as tetrameter, etc. This was eye opening for me.
Ms. Burt's book consists of six chapters, each outlining a different aspect of poetry, familiarizing us with the rudimetary building blocks of poetry and giving us samples from some of the author's chosen poets from both past and present.
The book is very well written. I love the author's writing style--clear and concise, yet not at all mechanical. Her writing has its own sing-song tone of beautifully written English, sometimes seeming to sound poetical though she is not writing poetry here. Her sentences oftentimes have paranthetical expressions in the middle and that works so well for getting her concepts to stick in your mind. It makes her writing soothing, almost. They did for me, anyway.
I have gained alot from reading this volume. While it didn't make me love poetry (I don't think I ever will); it DID help me understand it better. In particular, it caused me to respect poets and poetry much more. It seemed to me like the forms and structures they are sometimes bound to follow are every bit as hard as mathematical formulas (a hard subject for me). As a matter of fact, there is alot of math involved in those poems' construction!
I highly recommend this book for poetry enthusiasts, but in particular; for poetry non-enthusiasts!… (more)