Poem Is You: Sixty Contemporary American Poems & How to Read Them

‘Poet and critic Burt’s ambitious anthology of recent poems by American authors, from 1981 to 2015, creates a coherent body of work out of the vast landscape of recent American poetry. Burt’s 60 selections are eclectic, mingling instantly recognizable names (John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich) with newer talents (Lucia Perillo, Claudia Rankine.)’ Burt’s many ways of looking at a poem will inspire new students and accomplished poets, especially as many of his meditations circle the question of what poetry does, or should do: making readers pay attention, ask questions, and experience new things. Burt’s formidable breadth of knowledge about the practice of poetry, from Virgil up to 2015, allows him to make nimble connections among authors and establish an ars poetica for current American lyric poetry, an impressive feat given the diverse selection just within this book.’?

‘Drawing on endlessly deep wells of enthusiasm and acuity, The Poem Is You offers not so much a sequence of explanations as a series of invitations: Stephen Burt is more intent on describing how to think about a particular poem than on telling us what to think. Unpredictable yet unfailingly useful, The Poem Is You is a joyous book.’?

‘This is a splendid book. Many critics and poets have published essays or reviews of contemporary poetry, but Burt is doing something else here. He lavishes the poems with extraordinarily nimble, alert, luminous attention. It’s hard to think of a better introduction to contemporary American poetry.’?