Don't Read Poetry

April 8, 2019
In this eloquent literary primer, Burt, a poet and Harvard English professor, contends with poetry’s reputation for inaccessibility. Beginning by proposing readers think in terms of individual works rather than poetry in general, Burt goes on to discuss a wide selection of practitioners, from past masters including W.B. Yeats and Langston Hughes to such contemporary figures as Cathy Park Hong and Terrance Hayes, to support her argument that all readers can find poetic voices and styles agreeable to them. Her selections also show an awareness of the historic underrepresentation of different groups, in terms of races, sexual preference, and languages, in American poetry. The writing falters at times, as when an attempt to seem current with a reference to Pokémon comes across as patronizing. Burt’s writing is best when deeply enmeshed in a poem, such as John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” used to critique modern preconceptions about plainspokeness being the most sincere way of speaking; she describes the 17th-century work’s “elaborate, challenging metaphors not as barriers to sincerity but as ways to achieve it.” Burt’s sweeping, insightful survey makes a great case that with wider exposure, people will discover how poems can be relevant to anyone who has “ever felt unique, or confused, or confusing to others.”

Starred review from June 1, 2019

If good criticism opens windows and lets light in, and great criticism sheds a light of its own, Burt (English, Harvard Univ.; poetry coeditor, the Nation) is a solar-powered 1,000-watt bulb. The provocative title refers to the author's theory that we don't read "poetry" but rather specific and individual poems, her goal being to show readers how to do this more effectively. With insight and expertise, Burt illuminates the shadowy corners of this mysterious art, demonstrating time and again that there is nothing to fear! Six bountiful chapters introduce an array of poets (many contemporary) and offer tips on ways to approach poetry and why we should: poetry helps to make us better humans and broadens our awareness of a vast diversity of thought, bearing the timeless (and sometimes ineffable) wisdom of the world's greatest minds: Homer, Sappho, Shakespeare, Blake, Dickinson, Whitman, Moore, Williams, Ammons, Oliver, and Youn (among them). Periodically, this reader wished Burt would have taken a breath and let us appreciate what she's helped us see. And yet, her generosity, clarity, and open-hearted good sense triumph and may even draw in new readers to appreciate the skills of the literary critic. VERDICT A wonderful guide to a misunderstood art. Essential for all libraries.--Herman Sutter, St. Agnes Acad., Houston

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2019
It seems like every few years another book, such as Matthew Zapruder's Why Poetry (2017), or Tony Hoagland's Twenty Poems that Could Save America and Other Essays (2014), takes up the question of why people don't read more poetry. And yet, a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts study found that, since 2012, poetry readership has more than doubled among readers aged 18-24. Perhaps this renewed readership has already caught on to Burt's approach, which holds that people shouldn't read poetry, per se. Instead, they should read individual poems and poets, and obliterate the imposing monolith of Poetry with a capital P. Burt offers a number of routes readers can take to derive satisfaction from poetry. She looks at poems from writers as disparate as Langston Hughes and Frank Bidart, but also includes contemporary work from poets such as Craig Santos Perez and Carmen Gim�nez Smith, together with relatable examples from comics like X-Men and Black Panther. As the author of several collections of poetry and numerous works of literary criticism, Burt is well-suited to convince even the most skeptical readers that poems, indeed, should be read by everybody.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)