In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current crop of American poets necessarily give up on others. — Stephen Burt Copy Share Image
Durable, memorable poetry is usually alert to complexity. A really good poem gives you a reason to read it 20 times, because the language in a good poem is doing a lot of work emotionally and a lot of work… — 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
