Tuesday, May 08, 2007

What is Stephen Burt reading?

The poet and critic Stephen Burt is the current featured contributer at "Writers Read."

He owns up to reading a lot of books at once. Among the books he named: A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow by Noah Eli Gordon, Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography by J. E. Malpas, and One Kind of Everything by Dan Chiasson.

And:
The Full Indian Rope Trick by Colette Bryce. Fun, emotionally rich, rhyme-wielding second collection by a poet from Ireland, living in Scotland, well-thought-of there and unknown here. Reminds me at times of Merrill, at times of Richard Wilbur, at times of Lavinia Greenlaw.
There are more titles in Burt's entry: check it out.

Stephen Burt is Associate Professor of English at Macalester College. He reviews new poetry (and books about poetry) frequently for a variety of publications in the United States and Britain, among them the New York Times Book Review, Boston Review, Poetry Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Yale Review. He has also edited for publication some posthumous writings of Randall Jarrell's, including Jarrell's lectures on W. H. Auden, which is available from Columbia University Press.

His critical study, Randall Jarrell and His Age, appeared from Columbia University Press in 2002; his book of poetry, Popular Music (CLP/Colorado) in 1999. Another book of poetry, Parallel Play, was published last year by Graywolf.

--Marshal Zeringue