Poem Is You

A delightful and provocative journey across four decades of contemporary American poetry with Stephanie Burt, “the leading poetry critic of her generation” (New York Times), as our surefooted guide.In The Poem Is You, critic and poet Stephanie Burt canvasses contemporary American poetry —from the urgency of Claudia Rankine’sCitizento the limitless energy of Juan Felipe Herrera and the erotic provocations of D. A. Powell. Burt presents a range of sixty poems, each accompanied by an original essay explaining how the poem works, why it matters, and how it speaks to art and culture more broadly. Included here are classics by John Ashbery, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Robert Hass, along with less-famous poems by very famous poets, such as Louise Glück and Kay Ryan. Burt also examines verse from prizewinning writers near the start of their careers and by others less well known but equally worth knowing. The Poem Is Youis crafted especially for those readers who don’t know where to begin with contemporary American poetry. Burt illuminates what these writers have fashioned in their work, and how that work continues to impact us today.

Stephanie Burt is the author of fourteen books of poetry and literary criticism. A past judge for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, she serves as a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, Raritan, and other publications. She is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University.