Don't Read Poetry

Don't Read Poetry is a book about how to read poetry, and its title sounds like a contradiction: if someone tells you what poetry is, why to read it, and how to read it, they have usually already got it wrong. The author, Stephanie Burt, is a professor of English at Harvard University and poetry editor of The Nation. In this book she reminds readers that poetry is not a forbiddingly difficult, elitist art; it expresses emotions common to all people and strikes a nerve in a given moment. Poetry can celebrate a birth, comfort the dying, prompt you to quit your job, find a new one, or simply not work at all; it brings pleasures akin to solving a word puzzle, sewing, or playing basketball, and more importantly, it makes you feel you are not alone. Burt takes six keywords—"feeling," "character," "form," "difficulty," "wisdom," and "community"—as entry points to analyze the right way to open a poem, comparing the poetry system to a subway map to show how poetry of different eras influences and communicates with one another. The examples range from Sappho, Li Bai, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth all the way to Elizabeth Bishop and contemporary poetry on social media; the book is both an introductory public lecture on poetry and an answer to the question of why we need poetry. She eases people's tense attitude toward this art, breaks the prejudice of "I just don't get it," and guides readers through the door of seemingly difficult contemporary poetry. At about 150,000 characters, it is a poetry-reading title planned by Unread.