Good poems do a lot of things at once. Often, by doing so, they encourage us to acknowledge mixed and incompatible feelings. Good poems, like good works of history, resist monocausal explanations for anything. There's not one reason why I… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
In the arts, in places where you're not going to save lives or save species, I think there's no reason to play ball. I… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
“TO A POOR OLD WOMAN" munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
One chance, One life. Make it or screw it up, it's your choice. Don't wait to long or your time will be up. — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
Powell belongs, in fact to the first generation of American poets who may have grown up without even a vestigial connection to the accentual-syllabic,… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
“Color Theory" How yellow the sky how little the understanding Intangible the things we know for sure Dusty silica clouds over Europe the very… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
Poetry can explain individuals to ourselves, and change our attitudes, and help us see the complexity of the world, but the kind of poetry… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
To do a poem justice, explain what makes it unique; to get a poem noticed, explain what makes it typical. — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
Good poems do a lot of things at once. Often, by doing so, they encourage us to acknowledge mixed and incompatible feelings. Good poems,… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
Gunn would be an important figure-rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring-in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
If we recover something like a functioning, well-informed democratic polity - if it hasn't been wrecked for good by the people who are getting… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
Some poets marry a language; some have affairs with it; some treat it as a parent, some as a child, some as an equal,… — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
