Stephen Burt will read in Cambridge on February 7th

Stephen Burt, will be reading from his own poetry at Blacksmith House, 56 Brattle Street, in Cambridge, Monday, February 7, 2011, at 8 p.m.

Burt's recent book of critical essays about poetry, Close Calls with Nonsense (Graywolf Press, 2009) was cited for its "sunny generosity" by Graeme Richardson in a TLS review which also noted his contrast in style with William Logan: "...the criticism is never quite as lacerating as Logan's and is never done for effect." Or this: "He likes formalists such as Wilbur and James Merrill, but also L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets like Armantrout, and oddities of no school like Paul Muldoon."

To get used to his Midwestern American accent, listen to him explain how rap music relates to Alexander Pope in a podcast for the Poetry Foundation, "Alexander Pope as Home Boy" (July 9, 2007).

Links

The Blacksmith House Poetry Series (www.ccae.org/events/blacksmith.html).

Graeme Richardson, "There she is," review of Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense, TLS (April 23, 2010) 24-25.

Stephen Burt, Close Calls with NONSENSE, A Poetry Blog (www.closecallswithnonsense.com).

Mexican-American experience in poetry

Stephen Burt has just reviewed 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border, Undocuments 1971-2007 and Half of the World in Light, New and Selected Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera in the New York Times (August 10, 2008):

"Herrera's best work seems not formless but endlessly fertile, open-ended, full of beginnings: 'Stop resisting the rupture. / Stop grasping the form,' he advises, 'recognize the rubble. My mother's rubble sky.'"

Burt makes the point that even as he writes about borders, Herrera's poetry defies boundaries, involving "a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity. . ."