Stephanie Burt (born 1971
) is a literary critic and poet who is Professor of English at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' has called her "one of the most influential poetry critics of
ergeneration". Burt grew up around Washington, D.C. She has published various collections of poetry and a large amount of literary criticism and research. Her work has appeared in ''The New Yorker,'' ''The New York Times Book Review'', ''The London Review of Books'', ''The Times Literary Supplement'', ''The Believer'', and ''The Boston Review''.
Literary criticism: new categories of contemporary poetry
Elliptical poetry
Burt received significant attention for coining the term "
elliptical poetry" in a 1998 book review of
Susan Wheeler's book ''Smokes'' in ''
Boston Review
''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...
'' magazine:
Elliptical poets try to manifest a person—who speaks the poem and reflects the poet—while using all the verbal gizmos developed over the last few decades to undermine the coherence of speaking selves. They are post-avant-gardist, or post-"postmodern": they have read (most of them) Stein's heirs, and the "language writers," and have chosen to do otherwise. Elliptical poems shift drastically between low (or slangy) and high (or naively "poetic") diction. Some are lists of phrases beginning "I am an X, I am a Y." Ellipticism's favorite established poets are Dickinson, Berryman, Ashbery, and/or Auden ... The poets tell almost-stories, or almost-obscured ones. They are sardonic, angered, defensively difficult, or desperate; they want to entertain as thoroughly as, but not to resemble, television.
Burt also adds that elliptical poets are "good at describing information overload". In addition to calling the subject of her review,
Susan Wheeler, an important elliptical poet, she also lists
Liam Rector's ''The Sorrow of Architecture'' (1984),
Lucie Brock-Broido's ''The Master Letters'' (1995),
Mark Ford's ''Landlocked'' (1992), and
Mark Levine's debut, ''Debt'' (1993) as "some groundbreaking and definitively Elliptical books."
The New Thing
In 2009, she wrote "The New Things", an essay in which she posits a new category of American contemporary poets, which she calls "The New Thing". These poets derive their style from the likes of
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
,
Robert Creeley
Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...
,
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
and
George Oppen
George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions o ...
:
The poets of the New Thing observe scenes and people (not only, but also, themselves) with a self-subordinating concision, so much so that the term "minimalism" comes up in discussions of their work ... The poets of the New Thing eschew sarcasm and tread lightly with ironies, and when they seem hard to pin down, it is because they leave space for interpretations to fit ... The new poetry, the new thing, seeks, as Williams did, well-made, attentive, unornamented things. It is equally at home (as he was) in portraits and still lifes, in epigram and quoted speech; and it is at home (as he was not) in articulating sometimes harsh judgments, and in casting backward looks. The new poets pursue compression, compact description, humility, restricted diction, and—despite their frequent skepticism—fidelity to a material and social world. They follow Williams’s "demand," as the critic Douglas Mao put it, "both that poetry be faithful to the thing represented and that it be a thing in itself." They are so bound up with ideas of durable thinghood that we can name the tendency simply by capitalizing: the New Thing. . . Reference, brevity, self-restraint, attention outside the self, material objects as models, Williams and his heirs as predecessors, classical lyric and epigram as precedents: all these, together, constitute the New Thing.[Burt, Stephen. "The New Thing." Boston Review. May/June 2009.]
Poets whom she cites as examples of "The New Thing" include
Rae Armantrout,
Michael O'Brien,
Justin Marks
Justin Marks (born March 25, 1981) is an American racing driver, entrepreneur, and current owner of Trackhouse Racing Team in the NASCAR Cup Series. He last competed in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, driving the No. 93 for Meyer Shank R ...
,
Elizabeth Treadwell, and
Graham Foust
Graham W. Foust (born August 25, 1970) is an American poet and currently is an associate professor at the University of Denver.
Early life and education
Foust was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He has a Bachel ...
.
Writings
In addition to her essays for the ''Boston Review'', Burt has written for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
,'' ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'', ''
Poetry Review
''Poetry Review'' is the magazine of The Poetry Society, edited by the poet Emily Berry. Founded in 1912, shortly after the establishment of the Society, previous editors have included poets Muriel Spark, Adrian Henri, Andrew Motion and Maurice R ...
'', ''
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'', ''
The Times Literary Supplement
''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
History
The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication i ...
'', the ''
London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of ...
'', and the ''
Yale Review
''The Yale Review'' is the oldest literary journal in the United States. It is published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
It was founded in 1819 as ''The Christian Spectator'' to support Evangelicalism. Over time it began to publish more on hi ...
''.
She has a particular interest in the work of the poet/critic
Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell (May 6, 1914 – October 14, 1965) was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—a position that now bears the title Poet ...
, and Burt's book ''Randall Jarrell and His Age'' reevaluates Jarrell's importance as a poet. The book won the
Warren-Brooks Award in 2002. In explaining her book's aim, Burt wrote, "Many readers know Jarrell as the author of several anthology poems (for example, "
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is a five-line poem by Randall Jarrell published in 1945. The poem is about the death of a gunner in a Sperry ball turret on a World War II American bomber aircraft.
From my mother's sleep I fell into the St ...
"), a charming book or two for children, and a panoply of influential reviews. This book aims to illuminate a Jarrell more ambitious, more complex, and more important than that." In 2005, she also edited ''Randall Jarrell on
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
'', a collection of Jarrell's critical essays.
In addition to writing about poets and poetry, Burt has published four books of her own poetry, ''Popular Music'' (1999), which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry, ''Parallel Play'' (2006), ''Belmont'' (2013) and ''Advice From The Lights'' (2017).
On occasion, she has been known to write for a popular audience on ''
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'' and for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', including an article about ''
X-Men: Days of Future Past'' in the voice of
Kitty Pryde
Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. The character First appearance, first appeared in ''The Uncanny X-Men'' #129 (January 1980) and was ...
.
Career
Burt earned an
AB from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1994 and a
PhD from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
in 2000 before joining the faculty at
Macalester College
Macalester College () is a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Founded in 1874, Macalester is exclusively an undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 2,174 students in the fall of 2018 from 50 U.S. states, four U.S te ...
from 2000 to 2007. Since 2007, she has worked at Harvard University, where she became a tenured professor in 2010.
In 2017, she transitioned to female.
She has since been active in LGBTQA+ rights and awareness campaigns.
Bibliography
Poetry
Collections
*
* , OCLC=62938522-->
*
*
*
*
[https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/we-are-mermaid]
List of poems
Literary criticism
* ''Randall Jarrell and His Age'' (
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...
, 2002)
* ''Randall Jarrell on W.H. Auden'' (
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...
, 2005)
*
The Forms of Youth: Twentieth-Century Poetry and Adolescence' (
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...
, 2007)
* ''Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry'' (
Graywolf Press
Graywolf Press is an Independent publisher, independent, non-profit publishing, publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Graywolf Press collaborates with organizations such as the Co ...
, 2009)
* ''The Art of the Sonnet''.(2010)
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
( co-authored with
David Mikics
David Mikics is the Moores Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and the Honors College, University of Houston.
His book on Stanley Kubrick in the Yale Jewish Lives series was published in 2020. His book about Saul Bellow
Saul Be ...
)
*
* ''From There: Some Thoughts on Poetry & Place''. (2016) Ronsdale Press
* ''The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them''. (2016)
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
*
References
External links
Burt's personal websiteBurt's Boston Review essay introducing "Elliptical poetry"Burt's Boston Review essay on "The New Thing"* Plunkett, Adam
"The Poetry World's Most Indiscriminate Fanboy" ''The New Republic'', October 26, 2013
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burt, Stephen
American literary critics
Women literary critics
The Believer (magazine) people
Harvard University alumni
The New Yorker people
Yale University alumni
Living people
Transgender women
Transgender writers
Transgender academics
Harvard University faculty
Macalester College faculty
1971 births
American women critics